


Holding Darkness Within

by stlouisphile, TheGingerAvenger



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Ainsley Whitly Needs a Hug, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Attempt at Humor, Attempted Murder, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Murder, Drug Abuse, Gen, Ghosts, Hallucinations, Haunted Houses, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, Murder, Murder Mystery, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Original Character(s), PSON Big Bang Challenge, Post-Season/Series 01 Finale, actual, depictions of dead people, whodunit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:40:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 53,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27350611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stlouisphile/pseuds/stlouisphile, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGingerAvenger/pseuds/TheGingerAvenger
Summary: Malcolm clasped his hands together, grinning. “So, we have a dead body, a supposedly haunted mansion, a vengeful killer, and a family of rich people with a secret worth killing over. You know what this sounds like?”“Oh, And Then There Were None!” Edrisa guessed, bouncing on her feet.“Clue,” suggested Dani.JT nodded his head solemnly. “Scooby-doo.”“I was going to say my mother’s dinner parties, but those work too.”-After Endicott, Malcolm struggles with his failure to protect Ainsley from Martin’s influence. Desperate for a distraction, Malcolm throws himself into a murder tied to a supposedly haunted house, a fifteen-year-old cold case, and a group of friends with too many secrets. But when the team’s investigation leads them to be trapped in the house, Malcolm will have to untangle the events of the past before the killer picks them off one by one.
Comments: 31
Kudos: 70
Collections: Prodigal Son Big Bang 2020 - Final Posts





	1. The Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LibraryBandit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibraryBandit/gifts).



> Big shout out to my beta suitupbuttercup for being her awesome, talented self and turning this chaotic mess into something much more readable, and for being patient with my very slow writing. Any mistakes or oddities you find now are mine and mine alone. Also, ya'll should check out her fics if you haven't already. She's got some great Brightwell fics that will pull at your heartstrings, and you can follow her on tumblr at ihavejarlsberg for some quality pson content.
> 
> Also big thanks to the amazing artist stlouisphile for creating a great and chilling piece of artwork for this fic (and for also being patient with my very slow writing). For more of their talented edits and all-around good content, you can check out their Twitter @stlouisphile.
> 
> And many, many thanks to the Pson Big Bang crew for not only creating this event but also providing constant support and encouragement, and for being willing to work with me and my deadline-challenged self.

_“Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within.”-_ Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

* * *

Three years after the Surgeon’s arrest, someone claimed to see a ghost on the second floor of the Whitly mansion.

Jessica, half-drunk before noon, had read the magazine article in a voice that bled acid, bright nails digging into the paper, her lips curled in an elegant and disdainful scowl. The witness described the phantom as hazy; nothing more than the blurred idea of a white dress, long flowing hair, and the chilling impression that it was screaming, mouth stretched wide and long, pale hands pressed against glass. His mother had thrown the magazine away with a derisive snort and had proclaimed the entire company trash. Miltons had lived in the mansion far longer than any Whitly, and no one had been ridiculous to claim it was haunted then.

But Malcolm had waited until she’d left before pulling the magazine back out. The front cover screamed up at him, a blurred shot of his home under the title “New York’s Most Haunted Locations” and his eyes had tracked to the window, where something vaguely human-shaped lurked behind the glass.

Even as a child, Malcolm had never truly believed in ghosts. He’d gone to enough therapy sessions to know any hallucinations he saw were just that; manifestations brought to life by guilt or grief or trauma. Or, in his case, all of the above. He had known, even then, that humans were often far more horrifying than any ghost.

But still, he clung to that magazine while something that had felt too desperate to be called hope unfurled in his chest. He spent the next few days researching everything he could on ghosts and seances and contacting the dead, and one night curled up in front of his father’s boarded up hobby room, both dreading and hoping the girl in the box would appear. But that grasp for answers had been useless. No ghost showed, and he’d spent the night imagining the creaks he heard on the other side of the boards had been his father moving around inside.

Twenty years later, as Malcolm stood outside his childhood home, trying to muster the strength to go in, he felt like that kid again, desperately hoping in the supernatural. Wishing the dread curling low in his gut was from something as simple as a ghost. Ghosts followed rules. Ghosts were confined to haunted houses and mist-shrouded graveyards. They could be banished, exorcised, appeased. But what waited for him past that door was far worse. Because memories, hallucinations, those _stuck_. Those clung to him, wrapped heavily around his neck like a noose.

His phone buzzed in his pocket and Malcolm heaved a sigh, his breath a fleeting plume of white. He knew who the text was from without checking. The buzz itself had somehow felt impatient. Another SOS from Ainsley. He was already twenty minutes late for brunch and from the ten other messages she'd sent him, she was two seconds away from making a break for it.

Malcolm’s eyes slipped involuntarily to that top window. There was the reflected flare of sunlight, the vaguest flutter of a curtain, but no ghosts banging useless fists against the glass. His stare dropped back down to the front door and he sucked in a deep breath, shoring up his already crumbling composure, before stepping inside. It was almost like slipping into water, holding his breath as he sank, steadily drowning in moments he should have been able to stop. Memories that played out like ghosts at the edges of his vision.

His father knelt on the marble floor, sweater a vivid red and smile wide, as he reassured Malcolm that they were the same. John Watkins’s voice echoed down the hallway, low and taunting, and the barest glint of an ax’s edge flashed in the corner of his eye. Chest constricting, Malcolm moved quickly across the foyer, but his eyes still caught on the half-open living room door. Ainsley stood inside, staring back at him with wide eyes, and blood splattered across her face in a constellation of red.

A tremor shivered across his hand, but he clenched his jaw, forced himself to look away, and pushed on, following the murmur of Jessica and Ainsley’s voices, before coming to a jerking halt in the dining room doorway. For a moment, he didn’t see his mother or his sister. Just Eve. Sitting in his chair like the first time they had met, smiling back at him.

Malcolm’s breath caught in his throat, a sharp inhale just loud enough to snag Ainsley’s attention. She twisted around in her seat, a blur of blonde hair and blue blouse, fast enough to jolt him out of his shock.

“Malcolm!” The faintest hint of an accusation tightened her voice, her eyes narrowing slightly over a stilted smile. “You _finally_ made it.”

He apologized with a grimace and a shrug that Ainsley accepted with a disgruntled frown, and wiped his shaking hand down the front of his suit, surreptitiously trying to press the tremors out against the fabric. Despite the way his heart rabbited in his chest, he took a steadying breath and turned to face Jessica.

“Sorry,” he said, layering thick, cheerful brightness into his voice that sounded gratingly fake even to him. “Time got away from me.”

With a disbelieving hum, Jessica dropped her attention to his hand, frowning. Ignoring the look, Malcolm glanced back to his seat, breath held frozen in his lungs, but Eve was gone.

So, he forced on a smile that, if anything, made the concerned suspicion on Jessica’s face deepen, and settled into his seat. He was fine. He was absolutely fine. He was just seeing things more than usual because he’d hardly slept in the weeks following Endicott, what with Ainsley’s self-defense claim, and Sophie Sanders confessing to Eddie’s murder, and every time he closed his eyes he saw Ainsley covered in blood.

But he was fine. Perfectly, one hundred percent fine.

It wasn’t like he was the one who killed someone.

Malcolm poked half-heartedly at his food, stomach churning at the smell, and slid a glance up at Ainsley. Ever since that night, he’d been looking for signs of trauma-signs he should have been looking for all along. Loss of sleep, zoning out, dramatic mood swings. But besides an annoyance at the network for forcing her to take some time off (courtesy of Jessica all but threatening bodily harm on an executive), and a small decrease in appetite (he’d made the mistake of bringing that up and Ainsley had stared at him, one eyebrow slowly raised, for a full minute before he took it back) Ainsley seemed fine. Or at least acting like nothing had happened.

But Malcolm kept thinking about the way she’d talked to the detective that night, with the calm, detached composure of a reporter listing facts, the slight shake in her voice the only sign of distress. Kept comparing that calm to the calm she’d had when she’d filmed Martin performing surgery on Jin. It was a defense mechanism, compartmentalizing, and he wondered how long she’d been doing that. How many memories had she locked away? How many emotions had she carefully folded and stuffed deep below the surface? And why hadn’t he noticed before?

“Malcolm, dear, Ainsley and I were just discussing the events we’ll have to attend if we have any hope of regaining some status now that we’ve officially become social pariahs.” Jessica cut into her omelet with a little too much force, lips pressed tight. “Of course, almost every event I’ve inquired about has suspiciously been sold out, except for the debut of a new musical. It’s no Hamilton, but I suppose beggars can’t be choosers.”

“Sounds riveting.” Malcolm shared a pointed look with Ainsley and the corners of her lips twitched before she ducked her head, a curtain of hair hiding her grin from Jessica.

“Oh, I’m so glad you think so,” Jessica said in a voice that dripped with false honey. “I already made sure to buy you a ticket. Try not to be late for once.”

Malcolm lifted his cup to his lips to hide his grimace. “What would I do without you, mother?” He muttered into his drink.

“Become a hermit. Only emerging from your apartment for some gruesome murder.”

Malcolm hummed in the back of his throat, turning the idea of becoming a crime-obsessed hermit around in his head. It did sound tempting.

“Don’t give him any ideas,” Ainsley mumbled half-heartedly, pushing her food around her plate. Her eyes drifted to her phone, perched precariously on the edge of the table by her glass, and she frowned at the black screen, still waiting for the network to call her back. Her tells were different from his own, he was only realizing just _how_ different, but he recognized the restless energy skittering across her skin. That buzzing urge to go back to work, to bury everything under a thick layer of normalcy and distraction.

With Endicott no longer able to provide protection, a good deal of his workers had folded under the pressure a wrathful Dani and JT pressed against them. That, coupled with Gil and Jessica’s testimony, Malcolm’s highly embellished eye-witness account, and Ainsley’s reputation as a darling reporter, had made it almost too easy for Jessica’s army of lawyers to convince a judge of what a danger Endicott had been and that Ainsley had acted purely out of self-defense.

But even with the ruling in her favor, he wasn’t so sure Ainsley’s life would ever go back to normal, no matter how determined she was to force it to happen. There would always be people who would look at her and wonder if it really had been self-defense. Or if she was more like their father than anyone had realized.

His fingers tightened around the stem of his spoon, knuckles white and straining. He could still hear the way she had _screamed_ when she’d stabbed Endicott, the rage that had twisted her face as she’d plunged the knife again and again and again into his chest. The blood seeping into the carpet, his father’s voice oozing pride, _my girl-_

A pointed _chink_ of silverware against china snapped his attention back to the present.

Ainsley stared at him from over the rim of her cup, brow furrowed in concern, and a pang of self-reproach stabbed at his chest. He’d fallen apart so loudly after their father was arrested that no one had thought to check on her, and yet she had always taken care of him. He should have paid more attention to her. He should have listened better.

He made a face as their mother started listing the people she sincerely hoped wouldn't be at the showing, and Ainsley’s answering grin was bright enough to almost make him feel better.

Ainsley’s phone rang, a short, sharp buzz against the tabletop, and she snatched it fast enough to almost knock her drink off the table. “It’s the network!” She shot to her feet, eyes glued to her phone, even as Jessica made a noise of protest. “I have to take this!”

She made it to the doorway before spinning around, grinning excitedly at them both, eyes more alive than he’d seen in weeks. “Fingers crossed!”

A heavy silence settled between them as she dashed away, her voice fading to nothing.

Slowly, Malcolm brought his spoon back down to his plate, food left uneaten. “Do you think they’ll actually take her back?” He asked.

Jessica sighed and set her fork down in favor of grabbing her drink. “I’m afraid she’s more likely to become the story instead. You know how reporters are. A bunch of vultures. They won’t have second thoughts picking apart their own.”

“Lovely metaphor for brunch, mother.” He tore his eyes away from the door and looked at her. “How is she doing, really?”

Jessica toyed with the stem of her glass, eyes locked on the liquid as it rippled inside. “Your guess is as good as mine. She won’t talk about what happened, at least, not to _me_ , and she still refuses to see a therapist.” Her voice tightened with frustration. “She’s determined to cling to her title as the _well-adjusted Whitly_.”

Malcolm frowned, fingers tapping a nervous beat on the table. He knew how bad it could be to bottle things up, and from how Ainsley had acted that night, she already had too many things bottled up to just add more.

“Some people are calling her a hero. Don’t get me wrong, I’m overjoyed the bastard is dead, it’s just . . .” Jessica lifted a trembling hand to her temple, fingers pressing hard into her skin. “How did we miss this?” She whispered.

Guilt coated his mouth with the taste of ash. Malcolm placed a hand on her arm, squeezing gently enough to pull her attention to him. “It’s not your fault,” he said, catching and holding her stare, willing her to believe him. “Nothing that happened is your fault.”

She smiled, a tight curve of her lips that showed she didn’t buy a single word he said, and patted his hand with her own. “How are _you_ holding up?”

Malcolm glanced away with a small shrug, mentally flipping through all the possible responses and realizing Jessica would believe a grand total of zero, when his phone buzzed. He pulled it out despite Jessica’s dramatic eye-rolling and mumbled threats to confiscate her children’s phones before meals, but Malcolm hardly heard her. His attention was narrowed in on the text from Gil.

 _Got a weird one_.

Followed by an address.

Relief washed over him, his mind already excitedly conjuring all the interesting ways a case could be weird. It’d been weeks since he’d had a case to distract him, a murder he could throw himself completely into so his mind wouldn’t have time to conjure ghosts.

“It’s Gil,” he said, already rising from his chair. “I have to go. He’s got a case.”

Jessica shook her head. “I swear, the two of you don’t understand the concept of a vacation.”

“Well, you know what they say,” he said with a grin. “Justice never sleeps.”

Her answering scoff followed him into the foyer. He made the mistake of glancing back at the living room where Ainsley stood, still talking on the phone. She caught sight of him and gave him a thumbs-up, grinning widely, and it was two images superimposed into one. Her now and happy, and her then and covered in blood.

Malcolm swallowed hard, a shiver tracing down his spine, and rushed out of the house, trying to ignore the way her voice seemed to twine with the ghost of their father’s, trailing him out into the day.

* * *

There were certain buildings that carried an aura of _you will be brutally murdered here_ and Motel 56 was one of them. A single-story building painted a faded, dirty yellow, it slumped beside a cracked parking lot, its light green doors facing the road. Half the letters in its sign were missing, but the message board underneath proudly boasted of free wi-fi and complimentary coffee.

The too-bright sun flared down on the parking lot but did little to burn the bite of cold from the air. Malcolm shoved his hands deep into his pockets and scanned the crowd of police officers and Edrisa’s team for Gil. Yellow police tape snapped gently in the wind, cordoning off the last three doors while an ambulance idled a few feet away, the back doors wide open. A woman sat hunched over in the back, clutching a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Her head was bent low, long, dark hair spilling over her shoulder, but he could still see her lips moving as she rocked back and forth, back and forth.

Curiosity and concern piqued, Malcolm eased closer. There was no blood on her that he could see, and her clothes, while casual, were nice. High heels new and clean, the fingers clenching tight around the blanket ending in elegantly painted nails, her earrings a glint of diamond in the sun. Not exactly the type of person one normally found at a sketchy motel.

“Excuse me,” he said, inching closer. “Are you-”

Her hand flashed out, fingers digging into his forearm as she jerked him closer, and Malcolm’s breath caught in his throat.

“It was him,” she hissed, blue eyes wide, voice the low, tattered moan of someone desperate, pleading, to be believed. “I saw him, it was _him_ , I know it was.” Her grip tightened, five points of sharp, digging pain against his arm, even as her gaze drifted past him. Her voice dropped to a breathless, confused whisper, a crease appearing between her eyes. “He looked just the same. E-even the uniform. . .”

“Who?” Malcolm pressed, and leaned forward instead of away, as if he could read the answer in the anguish on her face. “Who did you see?”

Her eyes were wide and spiderwebbed in red, unseeing as they looked past him, lost in something he couldn’t see.

“Alex,” she whispered, hand falling limp from his arm. “It’s always Alex.”

He opened his mouth to press further when a medic rounded the corner of the ambulance and jerked to a halt.

“Oh, no. No, no, no, you need to back away now,” the medic demanded, jabbing a finger at Malcolm. “We are _not_ doing this.”

Malcolm took a startled step back at the vehemence in the other man's voice, hands held up in defense. “I’m just asking her a few questions-”

“And I’m very aware of how you ask people questions.” The medic crossed his arms over his chest and leveled a glare at Malcolm. “She’s in shock. She doesn’t need you telling her she’s going to die or threatening her or any of the other crazy stunts you pull. You can question her later, when she’s better and you have a supervisor present.”

“But-”

“Bright!”

His head snapped back to the motel where Gil stood outside, waving him over. Malcolm glanced back at the woman, but the medic had already stepped between them, offering her some water. Her eyes were squeezed shut, body curled forward. He hesitated, momentarily torn. His curiosity urged him to press, but there was a crime scene he still needed to look at, and the medic was right. If she was important, then he could question her later.

Sparing the woman one last look, he made his way to Gil, and some of the tension drained from his shoulders. He had watched Gil recovering in the hospital, he had been there the day the doctors finally discharged him, but there was still something comforting about seeing Gil standing outside among the swarm of officers and Edrisa’s crew. Like he truly was okay and everything was finally back to normal.

“So, just to get this straight,” Malcolm called out. “I get stabbed and am forced to go on vacation. You get stabbed _and_ undergo major surgery, and yet you get to come straight back to work?”

“Perks of being the boss,” Gil answered with a wink and a welcoming squeeze of Malcolm’s shoulder. “Besides, with all the fallout from Endicott, the brass wouldn’t let me take a vacation even if I wanted one.”

Endicott’s involvement in the crime lab had called almost every high profile case in the past few years into question. Lawyers and detectives rushed to review and prove past cases, while others scrambled to prove the results had been falsified. Everyone in the precinct the past few days had been walking around looking like . . .well, like _him_. Heavily sleep deprived and on the verge of a mental breakdown.

Gil’s voice dropped to a concerned whisper as they ducked under the police tape, low enough to not be overheard by other officers. “How’s Ainsley?”

Malcolm sighed, eyes scanning and dismissing the meager crowd gathered a few feet from the police tape. People bored and curious, but none that stood out as suspicious. “She keeps insisting she’s fine. Like nothing happened.”

Gil raised an eyebrow in mock disbelief, eyes shining with amusement as the corner of his lips quirked. “What? A Whitly claiming they’re okay even when they’re not? I’m shocked.”

“Very funny,” Malcolm said dryly, but he could feel his own smile twitching at his lips.

A few steps away from a doorway guarded by a young-looking officer, Dani talked to a man wearing nothing more than a well-worn bathrobe, gesturing wildly with his hands and swaying on his feet, thin wisps of hair sticking up in dramatic angles on his head. She wore the blankly polite expression of someone valiantly trying to ignore the fact that they’re talking to someone who wasn’t wearing pants, the only sign of her discomfort the slight crinkle of her nose and the small curl of her lip. She caught sight of Malcolm over the man’s shoulder, and he waggled his eyebrows suggestively, grinning when she narrowed her eyes at him, trying to squash her own smile.

JT poked his head out the door and nodded at Malcolm and Gil. “Hope you didn’t have a big breakfast,” he warned.

“Actually, I did,” Malcolm answered as he tried to peer around JT into the room. He couldn’t catch more than a glimpse of a table and flickers of movement. “Had a whole three bites of food.”

Behind him, Gil sighed, but JT just slowly shook his head before finally moving out of the way.

The blood on the far wall was the first thing Malcolm saw. Dragged against the striped wallpaper in jagged, rust darkened streaks was the word _liar_ , repeated over and over again until it covered the entire wall. The words started off normal, carefully and meticulously written, but steadily eroded. Each letter grew more ragged, sloppier, until they became illegible slashes of red against the wallpaper. He drifted closer a half-step, tracing each letter with his eyes, and he could almost imagine the killer writing them out as cool composure steadily dissolved into blind rage.

The next thing he noticed was the corpse. The body of a man sprawled across the single bed, head turned towards the door. Half his skull was caved in, a mess of split skin, broken bone, and brain matter. The one visible eye was open and bloodshot, his mouth stretched wide in what looked like a silent scream.

“Bright!”

He glanced up from the body to smile at Edrisa. She beamed at him from the other side of the bed, bouncing on her feet as Dani slipped into the room. Clapping her hands together, she grinned at each of them. “This is nice, isn’t it? Everyone back together again, just like old times?”

Gil shook his head, albeit fondly. “Edrisa, please focus.”

“Right, sorry.” She cleared her throat before turning her attention to Malcolm, contagious excitement burning in her eyes as she gestured to the caved-in skull with a gloved hand. “As you can probably tell, cause of death appears to be blunt force trauma. The victim’s skull was bashed in, and a few of his bones are broken. Either he had a very nasty fall or he made someone with a heavy object very angry.” She tilted her head, lips pursed, and stared at the corpse contemplatively. “Maybe both.”

“Who was he?” Malcolm asked, bending over to take a closer look. He couldn’t make out many features, besides dark hair mattered with blood and one bloodshot blue eye.

“Marcus Stine,” JT answered. “Owned his own contracting and renovation company. His father was Nathaniel Stine, he started one of those fancy law firms that charge hundreds of dollars by the hour.” He crossed his arms over his chest and slid Malcolm a pointed look. “Figured you might know him.”

“Believe it or not, not all rich people know each other.”

“His sister, Abigail, was the one who found the body,” Dani added. “And officers have already notified his brother Simon.”

Malcolm straightened and surveyed the rest of the room. The carpet was a far cry from clean, but there didn’t appear to be any blood, besides the writing on the wall, and even that was neat compared to the blood splatter one expected from such injuries. “Whatever happened,” he muttered. “Didn’t happen here.”

“We have people canvassing the area for a possible murder site,” Gil said. “But they haven’t found anything yet.”

“The killer took a big risk, moving the body here afterward.” Malcolm glanced back at Dani. “Did anyone see or hear anything?”

She sighed. “The man next door said he saw our vic dragging a trunk into the room. Apparently, Marcus was a mess. He reeked of alcohol and muttered and sobbed the entire time.”

“Did he hear what Marcus was saying?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t get close enough.” Rocking back on her heels, she raised her eyebrows pointedly. “To quote him, Marcus was a few fries short of a happy meal.”

“We also haven’t been able to find the trunk he mentioned,” Gil added, frowning. “The killer must have taken it.”

Nodding, Malcolm looked back at Marcus. Like the woman from the ambulance, who Malcolm assumed was Abigail, Marcus’s clothes were casual but nice, loafers that screamed money even with blood splattered on them. His stare traveled around the room, taking in the carpet, the peeling wallpaper, the water stain on the ceiling. The stench of cigarettes was strong enough he could smell it even over the steadily growing odor of the body, and a few smells lurked underneath that he wasn’t willing to identify. It wasn’t exactly a place people with tons of money to spare willingly spent the night. “Do we know why he was here?”

“Nope. Dude practically lived on the other side of the city,” JT said. “My guess is he was meeting someone."

“Oh, a clandestine meeting!” Edrisa said. “How exciting.”

“Maybe,” Malcolm murmured. But why arrange to meet with someone only to get drunk beforehand? “Did anyone see Marcus with someone else?”

“No. The only working camera in this place is the one in the office. It shows Marcus arriving around 11:30, wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap. He paid for the room in cash, and that’s the last anyone saw of him before . . .” Gil gestured to the body, lips twitching in disgust. “That.”

The beginnings of a profile started to form in his head. Malcolm turned his attention back to the victim, puzzle pieces rearranging and clicking together with each bit of information. He could practically see it. The killer taking the time to move Marcus back to this room, to arrange him on the bed, to scrawl out judgment in blood. Everything set in its place like a scene in a play, methodically planned to elicit a reaction from the audience.

Gil folded his arms over his chest and tilted his head to try to get a better glimpse of Malcolm’s expression. “What are you thinking?” He prompted.

“That that’s the first thing you see when you walk into the room, not the body.” Malcolm pointed at the words _liar_ , trails of blood dragging from each letter like tears in the wallpaper. He spun around and gestured to the door. “And his head has been turned to face the door.”

JT frowned. “So?”

“So, the killer staged the entire room. Think about it, they had every opportunity to make Marcus’s death look like an accident. Assuming the neighbor is right, Marcus was already drunk, anyone would have believed he slipped and fell to his death. But instead, they took the risk to move him here, to set up the room just like this. The killer wanted his body to be discovered. They wanted to deliver _this_ message to someone.” Malcolm moved around the bed to stand in front of the bloody words before turning to face the room, taking in the body, the head turned towards the door, with a sweep of his hands. “Everything about this is set up to strike fear into the person who sees it.”

“Abigail,” Dani said. “She said she got a text from Marcus’s phone this morning, telling her to meet him here.”

“The killer wanted her specifically to see this.” One hand rubbed the spot where Abigail’s nails had dug into his skin. “She mentioned seeing someone here. Someone named Alex.”

“As far as we can tell, no one else was here. But she was practically inconsolable when officers arrived. Kept muttering under her breath.” JT shared a look with Gil, who shrugged a shoulder, before continuing. “She kept saying it was about the house.”

Malcolm glanced between them, raising an eyebrow. “What house?”

“Marcus was fixing up an old house the family owned,” Gil explained. “Trying to get it ready to put back on the market.” He paused for a moment, expression tight, like he already regretted the words he was about to say. “Abigail claims the house is haunted.”

Malcolm blinked. “A haunted house? Well,” he said with a grin. “This just got a lot more interesting.”

“Right?” Edrisa squealed. “A gruesome murder, a haunted house, _and_ a ghostly killer? It’s like a mystery novel.”

“Yeah,” JT drawled. “We’ll be sure to put a BOLO out on Casper.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Malcolm chided, bending down to peer at the body. “Casper’s the friendly ghost.”

Gil pinched the bridge of his nose. “I never thought I would miss being in the hospital,” he sighed.

Dani stepped closer to the message, lips pressed together in a solemn line. “And if this message was intended for Abigail,” she said. “Then the killer isn’t done yet.”

“Which brings us to the next bit of evidence.” Edrisa moved to stand beside Malcolm, holding out an evidence bag. “I found this clutched in the victim’s fist.”

The plastic crinkled under Malcolm’s fingers as he took the bag from her, peering at the contents. It was an old photograph, the colors faded, thick creases crisscrossing the image from where it had been repeatedly folded. Six teenagers posed in front of an iron gate, three boys and three girls, glimpses of a house looming in the distance behind them.

They were dressed in what looked like school uniforms; khaki dress pants and skirts, white button shirts with ties, navy blue vests and jackets. Most were locked in overly exaggerated poses. One stuck their tongue out at the camera, another had a hand pressed dramatically to their forehead as they froze mid-swoon, while one planted a kiss on a girl’s cheek; her face crinkled in delighted laughter. All varying ranges of movement, except for one.

His head was turned towards the house, features an indistinguishable blur of frozen movement. He stood a few feet away from the others, shoulders locked in a tight and stiff line. Still close, but not the arms-thrown-around-the-shoulders, knuckles-brushing-knuckles closeness of the others.

Malcolm had been forced into enough photos back in school to recognize the frigid, tense posture of an outcast when he saw one.

The only connection was with the girl next to him, long, dark hair spilling over her shoulder as she smiled sweetly at the camera. She was caught in the act of reaching for him, one hand outstretched, the tips of her fingers just brushing his.

His attention drifted back to the navy blue jackets, the logo too small for him to make out, and his mind circled back to what Abigail had said. When she’d talked about seeing Alex, she had mentioned him wearing a uniform.

He turned, a question on the tip of his tongue, when the sound of arguing voices rose outside the door. The tone registered first. Years of being forced to join his mother on social outings had made him a master at recognizing the specific condescending, curled tone of someone who was used to getting what they wanted due to the size of their bank account. It was brisk and tart, anger sharpening the edges into dagger points, and Malcolm caught the tail end of someone else’s voice, panicked and loud, before the door slammed open.

Malcolm and the others jerked around to find a man storming through the doorway, a cop following quick on his heels. He was the younger cop, new, circles almost as dark as Malcolm’s own under his eyes, and he cringed back under Gil’s exasperated look, mouthing a voiceless apology.

Malcolm glanced back at the civilian. He could tell, even without the man introducing himself, that he was Simon Stine. Malcolm could map out the similarities between him and Abigail in one look; the same dark hair, the same blue eyes, the same cupid bow lip. There was something meticulously purposeful about his appearance. A carefully constructed image from his tailored suit to the spotless shoes to the painstakingly styled hair, not a single strand out of place. Every part of his outward appearance styled to create a sense of composure, but that crafted control shattered against a wall the moment his eyes landed on Marcus’s body.

Simon came to a jerking halt, all the angry determination burning on his expression fracturing with shock, a torn gasp ripping from his lips. The blood drained from his face in a rush of sickly white and he rocked back a weak half-step, almost crashing into the cop behind him.

“What-” His voice was a hoarse, confused whisper, before rage dropped it down into a hiss. “What kind of sick joke-”

Promptly, Gil stepped in front of him, while Dani and JT slipped to stand beside him, trying to block the crime scene from Simon’s view.

“Sir, you need to get out of here, right now,” Gil said, voice calm but stern.

“What? No, no- you don’t understand, that’s my brother.” He lifted his hand like he was about to push Gil back, but seemed to think better of it halfway through, his hand hovering uncertainly between them. “That’s my. . .” He trailed off, wide blue eyes still locked on the body.

Gil gently, but firmly, started trying to guide the man out, offering soft condolences, but Malcolm took a small step forward, gaze fixed on Simon’s expressions. On the way his eyes kept cutting to the body, to the message on the wall, a mixture of shock and nausea working its way across his face. But there was something else about his reaction that nagged at Malcolm. Something more than shock or grief lurking beneath the surface.

“I assure you,” Gil continued, finally backing him to the doorway. “We’re going to do everything we can to find out who did this, but-”

Simon’s eyes snapped back to Gil, and there was the briefest pause where Gil’s words seemed to slip through the shock and register in his head, and then it was like watching someone flip a switch. One moment, he was all shock, wide eyes and hitched breaths, and the next his expression slipped into a carefully schooled mask. Closed, disdainfully professional as he lifted his chin and regarded Gil down the line of his nose.

“You don’t have to look very far,” he said, voice cold. “Thomas Cartwright is the one who did this. The maniac’s been threatening my firm and my brother ever since his wife died. As if it’s our fault she couldn’t drive properly.”

Gil reassured him that they would look into it as Malcolm inched even closer. Simon glanced over Gil’s shoulder to the body again, an almost involuntary movement, and his mask slipped, just a second, fractures breaking through. Pain and fear and dread and _recognition_.

“Are you sure he’s the only one who could have done this?” Malcolm asked. There had been no fear in Simon’s eyes when he had mentioned Cartwright, none of the dread that pooled in his eyes every time he glanced at the body. No, he had spoken about Cartwright with the force of someone trying to make it true. With the force of someone _wanting_ it to be true.

Simon’s attention snapped to him, walls rising again, as Gil exhaled heavily and JT muttered a soft, “seriously, dude?”

Malcolm could feel himself being evaluated and dismissed in that single glance. Simon raised a dark eyebrow. “What is that supposed to mean?” He asked.

“It means this is an ongoing investigation,” Malcolm answered. “And I think there’s more to this than you’re telling us.”

Simon’s lips slid into a thin smile with a soft scoff, before he turned back to Gil, dismissing Malcolm entirely. “Where is my sister?” He demanded.

“She’s talking to one of our officers,” Gil answered, gesturing to the door. “Someone will be happy to show you-”

“Do you normally question people right after they’ve been traumatized?” His voice dropped into an icy tightness, a threat coiling low underneath. “Without anyone else present?”

“She has nothing to worry about,” Gil said. “We’re just trying to get a better picture of what happened.”

“Well, detective, you can paint your picture whenever there’s a lawyer present.” He spared each of them one last, withering look, carefully not looking at the body or the message, before he turned on his heels and stormed out into the parking lot, brushing past the new cop without a backward glance.

Dani shook her head. “He’s going to be a fun one to question,” she grumbled.

“Great,” muttered Gil, raking a hand through his hair. “Perfect way to start off the case.” His eyes swept the room again, frowning in frustration. “Let’s get everything packed up before we have any more interruptions.”

Malcolm slipped past him and stepped outside in time to see Simon guiding Abigail from the ambulance towards a sleek black car idling a few feet away. Simon kept his attention forward, jaw clenched tight, his arm wrapped around his sister, but she glanced back at the motel.

Her eyes were blank, empty, and Malcolm thought, a chill tracing down his spine, that she had the hollowed-out expression of someone walking to their death.


	2. The Call

Malcolm stared at the evidence board, the bloody message, the broken corpse, the photograph all coming together to create a gruesome mosaic of crime scene photos. He stared at it, balanced on the edge of a careful, precarious focus, and tried to bury himself in the clues the photos revealed, fragmented glimpses into a killer’s psyche. He tried to ground himself in the ache of the table’s edge pressed against the small of his back from where he leaned against it. Tried to steady himself in the mundane chatter of the police station drifting in through the open door.

But he could still feel his watch steadily ticking the seconds down against his wrist, a heartbeat of its own against his pulse. A relentless _tick tick tick_ towards three o’clock that he could feel like a physical presence looming behind him, tension coiling tighter and tighter across his shoulders.

Malcolm focused on the board. He focused on the ache. He focused on the noise.

The clock struck three.

His phone rang.

The vibration shuddered across the table and that careful, precarious focus shattered. He’d placed the cell face down and far enough away that he could pretend he was ignoring it, but still close enough that he could easily grab it, that casual distance nothing more than a child’s naive belief that a night light would keep the monsters at bay. He’d told himself he needed it in case Jessica tried to reach him. He’d told himself he needed it in case Ainsley called. He’d told himself he needed it in case he needed help with the case. In case, in case, _in case_.

The excuses sounded hollow as his phone rang and rang and rang and he knew without looking who it was because he’d called at three every single day for the past week. Every single day since he’d been transferred from Rikers back to Claremont.

Malcolm breathed in slowly as his phone stilled, held that breath in his chest until it burned, before releasing it in a soft sigh. Wrapping an arm around his torso, he tapped the fingers of his other against his lips and refocused on the board, dragging his scattered thoughts back to the case. It was a revenge killing, that much was clear. A killer seeking retribution for some past wrongdoing, consumed to the point of murderous rage by a past event. But what? And why now? And against who? Dani had been right. Marcus couldn’t be the only guilty party. The crime scene had been too elaborately staged. And what did it have to do with the photo and the house?

His phone started ringing again. His grip tightened, fingers digging into his rib cage, jaw clenching tight enough to ache.

He’d done a little digging into the history of the house. A cursory search on his phone that had led him down a rabbit trail of varying origin stories, all ranging from plausible to plots picked straight from horror movies. Robert Bainbridge, a wealthy recluse, had built the manor back in the 1900s. Eventually, he married and had five children, each of whom slowly but surely succumbed to an unknown disease. The journal of the family doctor supposedly described Bainbridge’s descent into grief-stricken madness; shortness of temper, paranoid delusions of his children haunting the halls, and outbursts of violence. Three weeks after the death of their last child, the doctor had visited the house to find the wife dead on the foyer floor, her throat slashed, her arms stretching towards the door. Robert Bainbridge had thrown himself out the top floor window, his broken body found crumpled on the ground below.

Whether the story had any ounce of truth to it, Malcolm didn’t know, but Bainbridge’s death stuck with him. The image of a man’s body broken at the end of a long fall. Injuries that would have been similar to the ones Marcus suffered.

His phone rang.

Some claimed Robert had been abusive and sullen, a drunk who killed his wife and children. Some claimed it was the wife who had slowly poisoned her children before she killed her husband and herself. No matter how different, all the stories ended in the same tragedy.

His phone rang.

After that, the manor cycled through a list of different owners. A wealthy clairvoyant who lasted two years before mysteriously disappearing, an actor who stayed for half a year before suffering a mental breakdown, and then the manor had a minor stint as a bed and breakfast. A couple of the patrons complained of strange noises at night, someone banging on the walls, someone screaming down the hallways, someone singing a lullaby at three in the morning every single day. During the first year the bed and breakfast had opened, someone overdosed in one of the rooms, an electrician died in a freak accident, and numerous occupants fled in the middle of the night. It hadn’t taken long for the tabloids to pounce, twisting every odd occurrence or mysterious death into a paranormal event. Someone had a heart attack while descending the stairs, another drowned in the lake, another fell off the balcony; all attributed to the ghost of Robert Bainbridge, bent on making sure no one left the property.

His phone rang.

But as far as Malcolm could tell, the last death was back in the fifties, an elderly man who had passed away in his sleep, and he doubted the killer was out for revenge for something that happened so long ago.

His phone rang.

Malcolm’s thin focus shattered. With a frustrated hiss, he snatched up his phone. “What?” He snapped.

A long, heavy pause answered him, followed by, “Is this how we’re answering phones now?”

“Ainsley?” Malcolm sagged against the table, tension draining from his shoulders in a dizzying rush. He dragged a hand against his forehead as the beginnings of a headache tapped at his temples. “No, no, I’m sorry, I just-is everything okay?”

“Well, the network’s giving me a few more days off, out of the kindness of their hearts. I’m hiding from mother in my old bedroom and I feel like I’m going to crawl out of my skin from boredom. So, you know,” she forced false cheer into her voice. “The new normal!”

Malcolm cringed. “It can’t be that bad?”

“I did find one of those creepy angel statues. I must have shoved it under my mattress when I was younger and forgot about it. . .” She trailed off before taking a deep, steadying breath. “When you were with . . .when everything happened last Christmas, did John ever mention me?”

Malcolm froze. Memories of that night tugged at his thoughts, a phantom flare of pain in his side and thumb, John’s voice a whispered hiss in his ear, and he shoved them away, chest tightening. “What? No, why?”

“Oh, no real reason.” There was an odd weight to her words that made unease curl low in his gut. “I’ve just been wondering why he gave me those things.”

“He wasn’t very stable,” he said, a little too quickly, a little too casually, a frail, grasping attempt to appease both her and him. “And had an unhealthy relationship with religious icons. I’m sure it was nothing.”

“Right,” she said, tone short. “Of course it was nothing.”

Malcolm frowned. “Ains-”

“Are you working the Stine case?” She interrupted. “I saw it on the news. They’re being a bit stingy with the details.”

He glanced back at the board. “Yeah, it’s an . . .odd one.”

“You know,” she said, just casually enough to send an alert pinging in his head. “Now that I’m technically not working for the station, I could lend a hand.”

“I don’t think-”

“C’mon, please?” She pleaded and he could practically feel his resolve start to bend. “This is the only time we could actually work together, it’ll be fun! I’ve had plenty of experience digging up dirt on people like the Stines and we both know I’m the better investigator.”

“You are not,” he said, but with no heat. His attention dragged back to the photograph as he weighed his options. Gil wouldn’t be happy, but the Stines were already closing off, refusing to speak to the police. Plus, she sounded so anxious, and he knew what it was like being trapped with nothing but your thoughts. And she was a good investigator.

Malcolm sighed. “There might be something you can look into. One of the suspects mentioned seeing someone named Alex at the crime scene. I think he went to school with the victim.”

“That’s all you have? No last name?”

“I think something bad happened to him. Something that would lead him or someone else to seek vengeance.”

“Something bad happened to him,” she repeated wryly. “You know, with such great detective skills, it’s incredible there’s any crime left.”

He grinned. “Does the great investigator need more clues?”

She laughed and the pure relief in her voice was enough to lessen any doubts he had about letting her help. “All right, challenge accepted. How exactly did the victim die?”

_Give me all the gruesome details._

His mouth turned dry, throat tightening. He blamed it on having Martin in his mind, on thinking he was the one calling, that was the only reason her question brought up his words, his eagerness. But still . . .

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Ains.” Malcolm glanced away from the board, from the death his father would no doubt find absolutely fascinating, and stared out the window. The bright sun from earlier was gone, obscured by a steadily darkening blanket of clouds, and it painted the room in dreary shades of gray.

“Why not?” A slightly defensive note worked its way into her voice. “It might help me when I’m looking for motive.”

“You’re not supposed to be looking for motive, just for this one person. Besides, it’s confidential.”

“Oh, right. It’s confidential information you can share with your serial killer father, just not with your sister. Makes sense.”

“That’s not the same.”

“Of course it‘s not the same. _I_ _’m_ not the serial killer.” She scoffed. “You know, he wouldn’t stop talking about how it was only a matter of time before you called him for help. The two of you are such a team.”

Her tone caught him first. A thread of jealousy that turned her words brittle and sharp. Their actual meaning slammed into him a second later, forcing the breath from his lungs.

“You talked to him?” His words came out in a thin whisper, panic clawing its way around his throat.

There was a brief, startled pause before she started talking again and her voice turned defensive and harsh, the sharp bite of ice. “Yes, I did. He wouldn’t stop calling me and I was afraid he’d start calling the station and ruin any chance I had of getting my job back.”

The excuses were tainted with a trace of familiarity that made his chest constrict. He could practically hear himself say those same words and that sent terror screeching through his veins. He knew the slippery road those excuses led down.

As if she could too, Ainsley’s voice grew more clipped. “So, yes, I talked to him, and as shocking as it might be to you, I’m fine. No mental breakdowns here.”

His grip tightened around the phone, hard enough to make his fingers ache. His eyes cut nervously to the glass looking out to the station and he dropped his voice to a whisper, as if the cops outside might somehow overhear. “You can’t trust him, Ainsley. Every time you talk to him, you’re just giving him more things to use against you.”

“Gee, thanks so much for explaining that to me, I had no clue,” she said sarcastically. “Do you know how many of New York’s elite I’ve interviewed over the past few years? I know how to handle conversations with psychopaths. How is it that he’s the only one in this family that doesn’t treat me like I’m either a bomb about to explode or some helpless damsel? He actually listens.”

“He listens because he’s looking for ways to manipulate you.”

“You are such a hypocrite,” she snapped. “When you need help remembering what happened, it’s okay for you to talk to him, but I can’t because, despite all the evidence, _I’m_ the one who can’t handle a simple conversation?”

“Help remember . . .what do you need help remembering?” The sickly sweet scent of chloroform flooded his senses, an image of a woman stuffed into a box, chained to the back of the car, the feel of a knife in his hand, and John’s twisted face. The room spun and dipped around him as panic squeezed the last bit of air from his lungs. But Ainsley had been safe . . .Ainsley had to have been safe. “What do you remember?”

“You and mother keep forgetting I lived here too. He’s my father too, everything that happened to this family happened to me too, and I deserve to know the truth. If he’s the only one who’s going to talk to me about it, then fine.”

“You can talk to me, Ainsley.”

Her laugh was broken glass, harsh and scraping. “Since when?”

“Ains-”

“Just forget it,” she snapped and hung up.

Malcolm was left staring bewildered at his phone, trembling in his grip. The room contracted around him, the ground dipping under his feet, shock turning his head light, his breath short and thin. He kept replaying the conversation over and over, kept trying to find the spot where it had all unraveled.

“What just happened?” He whispered.

“Find anything useful?”

Startling, his head snapped up as Dani walked in and Malcolm slammed his phone down onto the table, hard enough for her to quirk an eyebrow.

‘Uh, nope, no, I’ve just been looking into the house.” He smiled, a movement that felt too thin and stretched, that just made her eyebrows rise even more, and dug his nails into the palm of his hand, trying to ground himself in the faint pain and force the shock off his face. “Didn’t find anything other than a few ghost stories.”

“I did some digging of my own.” Dani perched on the table beside him, hands braced against the edge and feet dangling over the side, crossed at the ankles. “The Stines bought the house about fifteen years ago. They were in the process of renovating it, but stopped all construction not even a year later.”

Malcolm frowned. “Any reason why?”

“Rumor is it had something to do with the house being haunted, but they never came out with an official reason. Whatever it was, it had to be big though.” Dani’s stare drifted to the board, lingering on the photo of Marcus on the bed. “There were plenty of offers to buy the place, and a few big-time studios wanted to use the location for filming, but the Stines wouldn’t budge. No one besides the family has set foot on the property for years.”

“That’s odd. In my experience, rich people rarely refuse opportunities to make themselves more money. What about the people in the photo?”

Dani shook her head. “We tried reaching out to the school to see if they could identify them, but they’re being evasive. I think Marcus’s brother already got to them.” She slid him a look. “Kinda odd that he doesn’t seem to want this case closed.”

Malcolm grunted. He’d looked a little into Simon, too. The older Stine sibling had taken over the firm after his father’s death, and had won just about every case he had. It sounded like he was going to make them jump through hoops to get any information.

His phone started buzzing again, and it somehow felt louder, choking. A vibration that shivered through the entire table. Malcolm squeezed his hand tighter and stared pointedly at the board, even as he felt Dani’s stare on the side of his face. He wanted to throw the phone out the nearest window. He wanted to pick it up and demand answers. He wanted to scream.

“How . . .” Dani started and then hesitated. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her lick her lips, mulling over the best possible way to approach the subject before she pushed on. “How are you?”

“Fine.” The lie felt easier than breathing, even if it sounder faker the more he used it.

Dani nodded, lips pressed together in that way that meant she knew he was lying but wasn’t going to push. “And Ainsley?”

That time the lie got stuck in his throat, buried under a deep, resounding fear. She’d talked to Martin. She wanted to keep talking to Martin. What had he said to her? What was she remembering he always thought she was fine because she had to be fine nothing could have happened to her but what if something had-

“Bright?” Dani pushed cautiously, curls framing her face as she leaned forward, forehead creasing as she tried to get a glimpse of his expression.

His hand shook, pressure built in his chest, a confusing tangle of worries and confessions and guilt that threatened to spill out on the wake of a scream. But Malcolm was saved from having to answer by JT strolling into the room. The other man ground to a halt in the doorway, glancing between the two of them with a quirked eyebrow. “Am I interrupting something?”

“Nope!” Malcolm said, a little too eagerly from the way JT frowned at him. “Just telling each other ghost stories.”

JT snorted. “I’ve got a non-fictional suspect in case you two want to do some actual police work.” He shook a stack of papers in his hand at them as he moved to plop down in his chair. “I’ve been looking into that Thomas Cartwright Simon mentioned, and he looks good for this.”

Shooting Malcolm one last concerned look, Dani twisted around to stare at JT, pulling one bent leg onto the table. “Oh, yeah?”

“Last year, Marcus got into a car accident with Cartwright’s wife. T-boned her after she ran a red light. Marcus ended up in the ER, Martha died on scene. Thomas accused Marcus of driving drunk, but Simon intervened and Marcus walked.” JT dropped the papers on the table. “To say Thomas was upset would be an understatement. These are all transcripts of messages he’s left at the Stine Law Firm, and every single one of them involves a death threat.”

“Fits the vengeance bill,” Dani said, sliding a glance at Malcolm.

Malcolm frowned, unconvinced. “But it sounds like Cartwright just has an issue with Simon and Marcus. Why drag their sister into it?” Malcolm jabbed a finger at the photograph. “And what about the house and the picture?”

“What about ‘em?” JT asked.

“The body, the message on the wall, that was all out in the open. That was all meant to be seen by the person who first came to the crime scene. In this case, Abigail. But this photo was hidden. It was meant for us. There has to be a reason.”

JT leaned back in his seat. “Yeah, ever hear of a red herring?”

“I don’t think that’s it.” Malcolm pushed himself away from the table and moved towards the board, gesturing to the photos with a wide sweep of his hand. Already, he could feel the ground steady again, already he could feel his thoughts start to slide back in line, focus narrowed in on the case and the case alone. “These types of killers aren’t driven by some innate urge to kill. They’re consumed by a certain moment; that’s what drives them. They suffered a wrong and they want the guilty party to suffer, to be reminded of their wrongdoing and regret what they did. They’re highly symbolic, everything at the crime scene would have been meticulously planned for that goal, nothing would have been in there without a reason.”

“Who’s to say it wasn’t already symbolic?” JT said. “I’ve seen plenty of messed up car crashes where victims ended up looking like Marcus. Plus, the message on the wall fits. Cartwright is calling the Stines out for lying about his wife’s murder.”

“Then who’s Alex?” Malcolm asked.

“Are we sure Abigail even saw anyone?” Dani asked. “I mean, seeing her brother like that would have been enough to mess anyone up.”

Malcolm shook his head. “Even if that were the case, something about Marcus’s death reminded her of Alex enough that she hallucinated him.”

“Still doesn’t mean they’re connected,” Dani said.

“Bainbridge’s death and Marcus’s are similar.” It sounded like a thinner connection out loud than in his head. He glanced from JT’s frown to Dani’s dubious look. “Just call it a hunch.”

JT grunted, tapping the stack of papers with a finger. “Well, my hunch is to go with the living, breathing suspect over the dude who’s been dead for over fifty years.”

“My hunch is to go with whatever Bright says!” Edrisa swooped into the room, carrying a file and a megawatt smile. “Since he’s always right.”

JT rolled his eyes as Malcolm smiled at her. “Thank you, Dr. Tanaka.”

“Any time! Thought you would want to know, I just finished my examination, and let me just say, this case keeps getting better and better,” she said, handing the file to Malcolm.

“Great,” Dani said sarcastically. “’Cause it would be a shame to have a normal case for once.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Malcolm grinned as he took the file and flipped through Edrisa’s findings.

“Estimated time of death is around 10:30 and midnight, but . . .” Edrisa paused and held up a finger dramatically, eyes sparkling behind her glasses. “He didn’t die from blunt force trauma. Most of his wounds were actually inflicted post mortem.”

Dani frowned at her. “Then how did he die?”

“Traumatic hemopneumothorax,” Edrisa said.

JT’s brow furrowed. “Gesundheit?”

“There was a deep incision between the ribs on his left side,” Edrisa explained, gesturing to her side with her hands. “Most likely from a knife. It was deep enough to have pierced his lung, which then collapsed. The space between his lung and his chest cavity filled with both air and blood. Essentially, he couldn’t get enough oxygen.”

“He suffocated,” JT grumbled. “You could have just said he suffocated.”

“Interesting,” Malcolm muttered, ignoring the disgruntled frown JT shot him. Malcolm glanced back at the board and pointed a finger at the photo of Marcus. “So, the way he looked at the crime scene, the crushed skull, the broken bones, that was all a conscious choice made by the killer. That wasn’t a coincidence, he had to look like that.”

“But that’s not the only weird thing,” Edrisa added. “There wasn’t a single drop of alcohol in Marcus’s system.”

JT propped his elbows on the table. “Then the neighbor from the motel lied?”

Dani glanced up from where she’d been reading Edrisa’s report over Malcolm’s shoulder. “Did anyone actually see Marcus’s face? Are we sure that’s who he saw?”

Malcolm looked at her. “You think it was the killer?”

She shrugged. “It’s possible, right? We already know Marcus didn’t die at the motel. His body had to get there somehow, and the person who booked the room was wearing sunglasses and a hat. It could have been anyone.”

“And, what, no one noticed him drag a dead body into a motel room?” JT asked, incredulous.

“It wouldn’t be that difficult,” Edrisa said. “There are plenty of luggage cases that could fit a person, especially when you don’t have to worry about hurting them. If they don’t fit, then break a couple of bones and bam-o! Assuming the killer transported the body before rigor mortis set in, the most difficult part would have been dealing with the dead weight. Plenty of serial killers relocated the bodies of their victims after the initial killing. Moving them to a public place like the motel would have been risky but-”

“But that might have been why he pretended to be drunk,” Malcolm finished. “Most people who see an inebriated person muttering and sobbing to themselves in the middle of the night outside a sketchy motel tend to walk in the opposite direction instead of taking a closer look.”

Edrisa beamed at him, snapping her hands into finger guns. “Exactly!”

“Assuming all of this is right, then it would have taken someone strong to move Marcus’s body.” JT gave Malcolm a smug look. “Someone like Thomas Cartwright.”

But Malcolm’s attention caught on something else in the report. “There aren’t any defensive wounds,” he muttered.

“Yep!” Edrisa said. “Odd thing number three.”

“So,” Dani said. “Marcus must have known the killer to let them get close enough to stab him through the ribs.”

Malcolm smirked at JT. “Puts a dent in your Cartwright theory.”

JT scowled. “Not necessarily.”

“Any chance it could have been his brother?” Dani asked. “He’s been evasive enough that he has to be hiding something.”

Malcolm handed the report back to Edrisa. “Give me a few minutes with him, and I’ll figure it out.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

Malcolm turned around to see Gil step into the room. The other man looked drained, heavy lines carved deep into his face, expression drawn, and Malcolm felt a quick, sharp pang of worry. He remembered, all too well, the way a healing stab wound could drain the strength out of a person. But Gil looked more annoyed than pained.

He came to a stop in front of the table, arms folded over his chest. “I just had a lengthy conversation with the brass. The Stine family is ruthless and well connected. They want us to tread carefully and tie this up quickly. Cross every _t_ and dot every _I,_ and think very, very hard before accusing anyone,” he said, leveling a pointed look at Malcolm.

Malcolm held up his hands in defense while Dani heaved a sigh.

“In other words, we should start looking for other jobs now?” She said, smirking at Malcolm’s glare.

“Simon’s hiding something.” Malcolm looked at each of them, imploring. “Anyone can see that.”

“Maybe, but we need a little more tact than the usual Malcolm Bright approach,” Gil continued. “We’ll have to do this as much by the book as possible. With everything else going on, we can’t afford to bring more scrutiny onto the station.”

Malcolm’s phone buzzed on the table, thoughts of Ainsley, of Martin, of bodies in his house, threatened to drag him down. Ignoring it, Malcolm clasped his hands together, an overly bright smile, tipping on the edge of mania, stretched across his face. “So, we have a dead body, a supposedly haunted mansion, a vengeful killer, and a family of rich people with a secret worth killing over. You know what this sounds like?”

“Oh, _And Then There Were None!_ ” Edrisa guessed, bouncing on her feet.

“Clue,” suggested Dani.

JT nodded his head solemnly. “Scooby-doo.”

“I was going to say my mother’s dinner parties, but those work too.”

A knock at the door frame drew their attention to an officer hovering in the doorway. He nodded his head at Gil. “Marcus Stine’s fiancee is here to talk to you,” he said.

“Well, at least someone in that family wants to talk,” Gil grumbled and turned back to the team. “JT and Dani, see if you can track down Cartwright, Malcolm and I will talk to the fiancee.”

Malcolm hesitated on his way after Gil and snatched the photo off the evidence board, shrugging at Gil’s questioning look. “She’s the only member of the family willing to talk to us,” he explained, slipping the photo into the inner pocket of his jacket. “Might as well see if she can identify them.”

He could feel his phone buzzing in his pocket as they made their way to the interview room, each vibration sending tension coiling tighter across his shoulders. Gil kept sliding him looks, sizing him up in sideways glances, but he thankfully didn’t ask Malcolm if he was okay. Or worse, tell him to take some time off.

Through the glass window in the interview room, he could see a woman sitting at the table, hands clasped in front of her. Her auburn hair was pulled into a ponytail, a few loose strands curling around her face. Someone had given her a bottle of water and it sat, untouched and unopened, beside her arm. She stared down at her hands, slowly twisting a ring around her finger until the sound of Gil opening the door caused her to lift her head.

Grief was heavy and weighted, a difficult emotion to authentically fake, but Malcolm could see it in the raw redness of her brown eyes, the defeated slump of her shoulders, the slight tremor of her hands, even as she straightened in her seat.

“Miss Barrett,” Gil said, voice compassionate. “I’m Lieutenant Arroyo and this is Malcolm Bright. We’re very sorry for your loss.”

She shook her head, one trembling hand lifting to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Thank you,” she whispered hoarsely. “And please, call me Natalie.”

“What can you tell us about Marcus?” Gil asked.

“He wasn’t a bad man,” she said, glancing at them imploringly. “I know there are people who don’t like him or his family, and I know people will tell you horrible things about him, but he wasn’t a bad man and I just . . .” Her voice cracked. “I can’t think of anyone who could do this.”

“What about Thomas Cartwright?” Malcolm asked. “Simon seemed to think he could be involved.”

She glanced at him, surprised. “You think he could have done this?”

“He believed Marcus killed someone he loved,” Malcolm said. “That kind of pain, that kind of anger, can cause a person to do just about anything.”

She stared at him for a moment, searching, fingers poised above the table in a forgotten tap. “He came by the house once, when Marcus wasn’t around. He was angry enough that I threatened to call the cops if he didn’t leave, and he did. I haven’t seen him since, and Marcus tried so hard to make it up to him.” She cut off, shaking her head. “I know it sounds cliche, but Marcus changed after the accident. Consequences didn’t mean much to him before. He would rather bury his problems than face or fix them, but after what happened, he said he was going to make things right. He was going to stop drinking, stop staying out late. He . . .” She twisted the ring around her finger, again and again. “He proposed not long after. We haven’t even started planning for a wedding.”

Malcolm tilted his head to the side, clocking every flicker of emotion across her face. “You thought he was going to change his mind.”

“I wanted to make sure he meant it before I committed.” Her eyes stayed locked on the ring, voice dropping to a soft whisper. “Guess it doesn’t matter now.”

Malcolm leaned forward, frowning. Whenever she looked at him or Gil, it was with quick, fleeting glances, her eyes cutting away quickly. She never met their stares head-on for long.

“There’s something else,” Malcolm pressed and waited until she dragged her eyes up to meet his, as if she had to force them to stay on him. “Something you’re not telling us.”

“He wasn’t a bad man,” she repeated in a whisper. “I need you to know that. He wasn’t a bad person.”

“Natalie, if there’s something about your fiance you know that might help with the investigation, you need to tell us,” Gil said.

She took a deep, steadying breath, one that shuddered on the way out, before speaking. “He was being blackmailed. He told me the day after the accident. It’d been going on for just a year or so, but he thought I should know.”

“Do you know why?” Gil asked.

She shook her head. “No.”

“You just found out your fiance was being blackmailed and you didn’t think to ask him why?” Malcolm asked.

She shook her head again, lips curved into a frown as she stared at the bottle of water, as if she could find the right answers hidden behind the plastic. “My father was an addict, and the only life-changing revelation that ever stuck for him was when he was dying. He called me a few days before he passed and told me all the things he’d done wrong, everything he wished he’d done differently, like I was a priest who could pardon his sins.” Her lips twisted, a grimace of a smile, laced with pain and bitterness. “I’ve always wondered if it takes something as permanent as death to make you see all the wrong you’ve done, have you truly changed? Or are you still the same scared coward, grasping at straws to save your neck?”

She met Malcolm’s stare, her eyes burning, and he couldn’t tell if it was anger at her fiance or anger at herself, maybe a bit of both. “And that’s all I could think of when Marcus started telling me about the blackmail. I could just hear my father’s voice in the back of my head, except Marcus wasn’t dying. He was going to keep on living. He was going to realize staying the same was so much easier than doing the right thing. Than changing. So, no, I didn’t ask for details, not when he could change his mind, not when he could go back to the way he’d been and I’d be left with all this new information about him. I thought it best if I didn’t know.” She dropped her stare back to her hands, back to the ring she twisted and twisted and twisted, her voice a sardonic curl. “Ignorance is bliss, right?”

It was another angle to work from, another piece in the puzzle; while unusual for blackmailers to kill their sources of income, it had happened before, and Malcolm could see Gil turning that scenario over in his mind. But there was still another angle Malcolm wanted to work, another meaning behind the murders that nagged at him.

“After the accident,” Malcolm asked. “Is that when he started working on the house?”

“Yes.” She scoffed bitterly, closing her eyes with a rueful shake of her head. “I know how this is going to sound, and I truly don’t believe in all those stories about it being haunted, but he changed after he started working on that house.”

“How exactly?” Gil asked.

“He normally worked with a crew, but he wouldn’t let anyone come inside with him. He’d work all hours of the day and night with hardly any breaks. He wasn’t a quiet man, there always had to be noise, there always had to be a distraction, but he started to pull into himself, to close off, and I could never figure out why. Hours and days would go by where he wouldn’t say a word. And sometimes I would come and visit him and he’d just be standing in the middle of a room, staring off into space.” She ran her hands up the sides of her arms with a frown, as if warding off chills.

“Did anything strange happen at the house? Anything you can think of that might have caused him to act that way?” Gil asked.

“I went to bring him lunch one day, and there was a man leaving the house. I didn’t get a good glimpse of him before he got in his car, but Marcus seemed very agitated afterward. He kept telling me that he didn’t have much time left and then the next day he got into a fight with Simon.”

Malcolm exchanged a quick look with Gil.

“They fought?” Gil pressed.

“Oh, yes. I couldn’t get close enough to hear what they said, but it was obvious it was about the house. Simon wasn’t very happy Marcus was trying to fix it. I mean, they never got along anyway, but they’d never fought like that before.”

Malcolm pulled the photo out of his pocket and placed it on the table in front of her. “Do you know who these people are?”

She frowned at it, brow furrowed. “These are friends of his from school, I think.” She leaned forward for a closer look, brushing a light fingertip across the surface. “He didn’t talk much about that time.”

“Anything you can tell us would be helpful,” Gil said. “Anything you can think of, no matter how small.”

She nodded her head, teeth sinking into her bottom lip. Her fingers hovered over each person, a light tap for every name. “This is Irene, that’s Charlie, and Zane, I think? Marcus and Abigail.” Her finger stopped over the last one, the one whose face was nothing more than a blur. She glanced up, brown eyes locking with Gil’s. “And that one’s Alex.”

“Alex, who?” Malcolm pressed.

She dragged her eyes away from Gil to frown at Malcolm. “I don’t know, I’m sorry. Like I said, he didn’t talk about them much.”

Malcolm tried not to let his disappointment show as he put the photo back into his pocket. He knew it had been a long shot when he’d grabbed it in the first place, but at least they now had names for the other people in the photo.

Natalie glanced between them, a confused crease between her eyes. “Is this relevant to the case?” She asked, a note of alarm working its way into her voice. “Do you think one of them had something to do with this?”

“We’re exploring every avenue,” Gil answered. “Did you talk to Marcus at all last night?”

“I did.” Her voice cracked. “He called me around 10:30 and there was something wrong. I knew there was something wrong, but I didn’t-” She cut off, taking a deep shuddering breath. “He was different. Agitated. He kept saying he was going to make it right. That he was going to fix everything.”

Malcolm glanced at Gil, the other man’s expression solemn. That was close to Edrisa’s estimated time of death. It was possible she had talked to him seconds before he died.

“Did he tell you if he was going to meet someone?” Gil asked. “Or why he was headed to the motel?”

“No, that’s the strange thing.” Natalie glanced at them, doubt and a little thread of fear in her eyes. “When he called me, he wasn’t on his way to meet anyone. Or even on his way to the motel. The last time I spoke to him, he was going to that house.”


	3. The Manor

Malcolm had always envisioned haunted houses as creatures of their own right. Buildings that loomed, rising from the ground below like an extension of the earth. Glowing windows set like scowling eyes, shingles like crooked, bared teeth. Weather-beaten statues scattered across an overgrown, tangled yard, their eyes following unsuspecting passerby. Haunted houses were dramatic, ancient, and knowing, entities that had lived forever and would live for ages more.

Bainbridge Manor was not that.

It looked smaller than its three stories, slumping rather than looming against a backdrop of skeletal trees, as if the ground were slowly swallowing it whole. Ivy tangled across the right-hand side, a web of green obscuring the house’s gray stone walls and snaking through broken windows. Missing shingles littered the unkempt yard, and the lake off to the side was stagnant and covered in a thin film of green, a ragged pier stretching out into the depths. Even with the storm clouds roiling heavy and bruised overhead, the house was something you felt bad for, not afraid of. Something left abandoned and forgotten.

Dead grass crunched underneath his shoes as Malcolm stepped out of Gil’s car. Cold wind nipped at his cheeks and rustled through the ivy, a shivered, rippling movement across the house. It seemed a little ridiculous to be disappointed that the manor wasn’t as grand or as menacing as the stories made it out to be, but still, he had expected something not quite as . . .desolate.

A warning rumble of thunder growled in the distance and Malcolm frowned up at the sky. They wouldn’t have long to search the house before the storm hit. The drive to the manor had been a fifteen-minute long trek up a steep road that twisted and curved through the forest, and he doubted the drive back would be easy once the rain started.

He heard Gil step out of the driver’s seat, the door closing with a sharp, echoing _snap_ , and Malcolm tilted his head back to take in the full disappointing brunt of the manor. And to avoid looking at Gil.

Malcolm had rambled the entire ride over, a steady stream of observations and theories on the case that had doubled back and repeated, that jumped from one to the other with no warning or connection, all fueled by prickling worry and the urge to not think about Ainsley or Martin or Endicott. Gil had slid him increasingly concerned glances throughout the ride, but the other man had let him talk without interruption. While Malcolm was grateful for that, he also knew it was only a matter of time before Gil asked if he was okay.

And with the way exhaustion settled heavy as cement through his limbs and his thoughts slugged along as though dragged through mud, he didn’t think he had it in him to lie.

But when he snuck a glance in Gil’s direction, the other man was staring up at the house, a crease between his eyes and a frown on his face.

“Everything okay?” Malcolm asked.

Gil’s frown deepened. “Yeah, it’s just . . .I’m having major deja vu,” he muttered.

Malcolm grinned. “You’ve probably watched one too many horror movies.”

But Gil just grunted, unconvinced. 

JT’s car came to a stop a few feet away from Gil’s, and he and Dani stepped out, both of them eyeing the house with skepticism, while Edrisa burst out from the backseat.

“Dr. Tanaka,” Malcolm called out, surprised. A pleased smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

She snorted, delight burning in her eyes. “Like I was going to miss out on a haunted house. Besides, you never know when you might need my expertise.”

“Pretty sure we won’t,” JT muttered.

Ignoring him, she moved to stand beside Malcolm and stared up at the house with a wide smile and pure, unadulterated joy. “Oh-ho,” she squealed. “I’m so going to mention this in the chat room.”

She beamed up at him and Malcolm couldn’t help but grin. Some of the earlier fascination he’d felt before seeing the house crept back in. While it would have been fun to see something a little more dramatic than the ramshackle manor, there was still a mystery to solve.

After a few seconds of sizing the house up, JT delivered his verdict with a grunted, “Doesn’t look spooky.”

Dani rocked back on her heels, hands shoved into the pockets of her jacket. “It is missing some dramatic lightning,” she teased, head cocked to the side in mock contemplation. Her eyes cut to Malcolm, glinting with amusement. “Maybe a swarm of bats?”

“Maybe that’s the point,” Malcolm said, tilting his head back to peer up at the house. “Maybe it knows the best way to lure someone into its clutches is to appear normal. Welcoming. Maybe it waits to show its true nature when it’s too late for anyone to escape.”

JT frowned at him, one eyebrow quirked. “You profiling houses now?”

“You should hear him profile windows,” Dani said.

Malcolm shrugged a shoulder. “I’m a man of many talents.”

Gil nodded at Dani and JT. “Any word on Cartwright?”

“Nope. No one’s seen him for over a week.” JT slid Malcolm a pointed look loaded with smug victory. “Which is a little suspicious.”

Malcolm held up a hand. “But not necessarily a sign of guilt.”

“We told his boss to give us a call if he showed up for his paycheck, not that that’s going to do us any good right now.” Dani frowned at her phone before holding it out for them to see. “No service.”

“Of course not,” JT grumbled.

Edrisa nodded her head sagely. “Classic horror movie move,” she said.

Malcolm pulled out his own phone and grimaced. He didn’t have signal either, but he did have a text from Ainsley. She had sent it ten minutes ago when he’d been too deep into his panicked rant about revenge killing to notice his phone buzzing.

It was a link to a website he doubted he’d be able to pull up, followed by a short summary of an article on a missing person’s case. Michael Alexander Malone had attended the same private school as the Stine children. He’d gone missing fifteen years ago, around the same time the Stine’s pulled the plug on the house, never to be found. She followed the information with a smiley face and Malcolm cringed. She’d developed a talent over the years of making plain emojis feel scathing.

“I think Ainsley found out who Alex was,” Malcolm said.

JT’s face scrunched in utter bewilderment. “Wait, your sister’s helping now? What is this, a family thing?”

Malcolm sighed. “She needed something to distract herself with.”

Dani arched an eyebrow. “She needed a murder to distract herself from another murder?” She smirked, shaking her head. “You two really are related.”

“Well, I think it’s sweet,” Edrisa said. “Everyone in my family thinks my job is weird.”

Cautiously, Malcolm glanced sideways at Gil. The other man kept his attention carefully focused on the house, hands planted on his hips. A muscle in his forehead feathered, jaw clenched tight in that all too familiar way Malcolm knew meant he was barely holding back a stern lecture.

“Bright,” Gil said in that measured _not angry_ tone. “Please tell me you did not tell your _journalist sister_ details about a highly classified case.”

Malcolm winced. To his left, Dani started shifting a few steps away from him, shrugging at his betrayed look. “In my defense,” he said. “I asked for her help before you told me to cross every _t_ and dot every _I_.” Gil looked at him in exasperation and Malcolm held up a hand, fingers splayed. “And I didn’t give her any specifics, just that Abigail mentioned seeing someone she thought was Alex outside the motel and I thought he went to the same school.”

With a frustrated shake of his head, Gil sighed, but gestured for Malcolm to hand over his phone. Dani and JT shifted to read over his shoulder as Gil scanned the text, Edrisa standing on her tiptoes to get a glimpse between them. A second passed and Gil’s eyes closed, a soft breath blowing past his lips as a pained expression shifted across his face.

“I know who that is,” he said, voice tight. “It was a missing person case I worked back when I first made detective.”

JT looked at him skeptically. “Are we talking actually missing or rich people cover up missing?”

“Everything pointed to actually missing. The people I talked to said he wasn’t happy. He’d been struggling since his father and mother split and his sister moved to college and he didn’t have many friends at school. His father said he’d talked about leaving to live with his sister and a good deal of his stuff was missing.” He looked back at the house, a heavy crease between his eyes. “It was a standard runaway case I’d worked a thousand times, but now . . .”

“You think the Stines could have had something to do with it?” Dani asked.

“It’s possible.” Gil pinched the bridge of his nose, hissing in frustration. “They were the last ones who saw him before he went missing. How did I not remember?”

“It’s not like you almost died recently or anything,” JT said, deadpan.

Malcolm could tell Gil didn’t believe him, could tell that Gil was still beating himself up over forgetting. Malcolm knew the particular guilt of a case never closed; that nagging little worry that took up permanent residence in his mind that made him wonder if he had really given the case everything he had. He placed a hand on Gil’s shoulder. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “Whatever happened to him, you did the best you could.”

Gil spared him a thin, strained smile before handing Malcolm back his phone. “Let’s go check out this house.”

With a delighted cackle, Edrisa bounded down the overgrown walkway while Dani and JT fell into step beside Malcolm.

“So, Ainsley found all that out in just a few hours?” JT whistled low and impressed. “Maybe we’re working with the wrong sibling.”

“If she doesn’t want to stay in journalism, I can always ask her to join the team,” Malcolm said. “Then you’d get to work with the both of us.”

He grinned at the sound of Gil’s strangled groan.

“Absolutely not,” Gil said, with a stern look over his shoulder. “One of you is hard enough to keep track of.”

While Gil wrestled with the key Natalie had given them, Malcolm glanced around. Wind rustled through the branches, sent dead leaves tumbling across the steps with a dry, hissing rattle. He could smell the scent of rotted wood, faint traces of mold, could see the way the paint peeled back from the door in jagged strips, claw marks dragged down the wood. Standing under the shadow of the porch, the house didn’t feel neglected, but _decayed_. A slow and deliberate rot.

The hinges groaned as Gil shoved the door open, a rusted screech that made JT wince. The foyer spread out wide around them in a way that was supposed to be sprawling and awe-inspiring, but felt more like being eaten alive by some large animal. A double staircase swept up the sides, curling to meet at the balcony above, a cased opening underneath revealing what looked like a dining room. A grand chandelier dangled overhead, glinting in what little light struggled through the grimy windows, and Malcolm could see cobwebs strung heavy between the garish diamonds. The chill from outside had seeped into the house, slipping underneath his jacket to trail goosebumps across his skin.

Malcolm stepped farther into the house, taking in the details. Everything was painted in dark tones, the floor and the walls the same somber color of dark mahogany. Dust motes drifting languidly through the air were the only movement, and Malcolm found himself holding his breath. A deliberate silence seemed to have settled over the house, heavy and yet fragile. It was the stifled stillness of a pent up scream. It was a silence that demanded careful treading, and words spoken in soft whispers.

Gil flicked the light switch and the chandelier spluttered to life, a too bright flare before it dimmed to a low, barely alive glow. But even that dim light was enough to peel back the shadows and brush away whatever illusion of silence he had imagined. Malcolm gave his head a sharp shake. He’d been reading too many horror stories. He needed to get his head right.

“That is the ugliest chandelier I’ve ever seen,” Dani said, before glancing at Malcolm appraisingly. “You know, these people might be richer than you.”

“Nah,” Malcolm said. “We just have better taste.”

Edrisa craned her head back to take in the chandelier with a low whistle, spinning around on her heel in a slow circle. “I read that after his children’s deaths, Bainbridge kept seeing them around the house. He’d hear their pained moans and cries for help in the middle of the night until he couldn’t take it anymore.” She dropped her stare down to Malcolm, eyes alight behind her glasses. “But, the really fascinating part is that every other person who’s encountered something paranormal in this house have said it was an older man’s voice they heard. Constantly pleading for someone, or _something_ , to leave him alone.”

“Please tell me you don’t actually believe any of this nonsense,” JT said.

Edrisa drew herself as tall as her height would allow, chin lifted. “I’m educated enough to know there’s plenty of phenomena we don’t have the means to explain yet. Plus, I’ve watched enough horror movies to know the skeptical character usually dies a horrible, painful death so. . .” She looked at JT with an overly solemn expression. “It was nice working with you, Detective Tarmel.”

JT gaped incredulously at Gil, who didn’t bother trying to hide his smile.

“JT is not going to die, Edrisa,” he said.

The ME scoffed before continuing her search of the room.

Malcolm’s attention dropped to the floor. The boards had been ripped up in sections, black holes peering down into whatever waited underneath the house. Bits of the walls had been broken through, leaving ragged and gaping chunks. Malcolm wasn’t much of a home improvement specialist, but the spots of destruction seemed oddly erratic. There was no rhyme or reason to the torn floorboards, to the gaping chunks in the wall. He peered through one into the next room, what he assumed used to be a parlor, the shrouded shapes of couches and chairs huddled around the edges of the room.

Frowning, Gil tapped the floor with the tip of his boot. “Why would he rip the flooring up? The woodwork is in decent condition. Slap some polish on it and it’d be a good selling point.”

At Malcolm’s questioning look, he shrugged. “Jackie went through a home improvement phase a while back.” His gaze swept the room. “We’d always planned on renovating our house, just never got around to it.”

Edrisa had paused underneath the balcony, her head tilted back and a pensive look on her face.

Malcolm moved to stand beside her, following her gaze upward. “You think the killer pushed him off the balcony?”

Her lips pursed to the side in thought. “Maybe. The floor is hard enough to cause some damage, though the injuries were extensive enough that I’d assume it was from a higher point.” She glanced back down at him and grinned. “However, if this was where it happened, it’s possible there’s still some DNA lingering around. Have you ever dropped a plate of spaghetti and sauce flies everywhere and you think you cleaned it up only to find spots of sauce stuck to the wall super far away? It’d be like that, just with brain matter and blood instead of sauce. It’s possible the killer might have missed spots when they cleaned up the scene.”

JT abruptly stopped his search to shoot her a nauseated look. “Can we not use food analogies when talking about brain matter?”

“You heard her, folks,” Gil said wryly. “Let’s look for some brain.”

Dani scrunched her nose, lips curled in disgust, as she cautiously peered under her shoe. “Great, _splatter_. Just what I’ve always wanted to look for.”

While the others searched, Malcolm wandered around the room, halfheartedly looking for clues. No one had lived in the manor for a long time. The only signs of life were the areas where Marcus had been slowly but surely gutting it, and the various tools he’d left scattered close to the walls. There was nothing for Malcolm to look at, no details that would offer him insight into the killer’s mind. Just bits and pieces leftover from previous owners, relics left abandoned to collect dust.

Except . . .Malcolm made his way over to the stairs that curved up the right side of the foyer. Perched on top of the newel post was a vase filled with flowers, a dried brown staining their petals. Dulled and dying, they were still the brightest spots in the room, both the color and the odd placement snatching his attention. There was something direct about their position on top of the post, purposefully placed there and purposefully kept there. A gift given and a gift received.

He tilted his head to the side, studying the roses with their wrinkled petals, the delicate blue flowers painted onto the white ceramic vase. It didn’t seem like normal practice for a contractor to use flowers to brighten up the house they were tearing apart, so he doubted they’d been left by Marcus. They were something one would expect from a remorseful killer, maybe, especially if this was where Marcus had been murdered, but they were brown enough to have been left for a few days. And there had been nothing about the crime scene that had indicated remorse, but the exact opposite.

They were odd and they were out of place, but nothing he could slip into a profile. He tucked them into the back of his mind to mull over and heaved a sigh. Turning to survey the room again, his fingers twitched at his sides. With nothing to focus on, no details to pull into his profile, his thoughts started to unravel, panic picking at the threads. Circling back to Ainsley, to Martin, to bodies bleeding out in his house, and his chest started to constrict.

Forcefully shoving his thoughts away, he sidled up to JT. “So, if this is Scooby-doo, does that make you Freddie?”

Overhead, the chandelier flickered, and JT shot it an affronted look before continuing his unenthusiastic search of the baseboards for brain matter, snorting. “Oh, no, if anyone’s that preppy ascot dude, it’s you.”

Malcolm frowned. “Really?”

JT raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Oh There’s a Dangerous Murderer Hiding in this Creepy House so Let’s Split up To Find Him and Not Take Any Weapons or Call for Backup? Yeah, that’s you.”

Dani gave him a sympathetic look from across the room. “He does have a point.”

“Okay, fine, so that means Edrisa is-”

“Velma,” JT and Dani said.

“Dani would be Daphne, I guess, and JT and Gil-”

Gil held up a hand as he crossed the foyer, attention locked on the floor. “No amount of money in the world will make me a part of this conversation.”

“Um, guys?” Edrisa’s voice wavered uncertainly from past the entryway underneath the balcony. “There’s, um, blood over here? Fresh blood?”

Malcolm and Gil exchanged alarmed looks before they quickly moved across the foyer to her, Dani and JT on their heels. A dining room table stretched out in the middle of the room, the wood dulled, a dusty candelabra set in the middle, and two darkened hallways stretched out on either side of the room, leading farther into the rest of the house. Edrisa had turned the light on, and it flickered in time with the chandelier, an almost hypnotic dimming of light that gave Malcolm the unsettling impression of a stuttering heartbeat. Edrisa was crouched towards the head of the table, fingers hovering over a section of the carpet.

She glanced up at them, eyes wide behind her glasses. “I don’t think we’re alone here.”

Malcolm crouched down beside her. The carpet was worn and musty, decorated with a twining pattern of curling red lines that wove together in a way that was slightly nauseating, and that almost hid the shining drops of scarlet scattered across it. Malcolm’s eyes tracked the trail as it led around the table and disappeared under the swing door set in the far wall.

Silently, Gil gestured for Malcolm and Edrisa to stand up and step behind him as he, Dani, and JT moved forward, pulling their guns out. Edrisa stationed herself on the other side of the table, a safe distance away, but Malcolm ignored Gil’s gesture and moved with them.

With each step they took, Malcolm could feel that heavy, poised silence of the house coiling around them like a snake, tighter and tighter. If he strained his hearing, he could just pick up faint sounds drifting through the door; the rush of running water, the shuffle of footsteps, and a low, muttered curse.

After a nod from Gil, Dani stretched out a hand to nudge the door, mouth opening to announce their presence, when it swung open.

The others snapped their guns up, shouting _freeze_ , and Malcolm caught the briefest glimpse of a woman startling, eyes blown wide, before she let out a startled shriek and stumbled back against the wall. At first, he thought it was Natalie, having caught nothing more than a glance of auburn hair. It wasn’t until he peered around JT that he noticed her hair was slightly longer, a tangle of waves stretching past a rounder chin to brush the tops of her shoulders. Her long-sleeve shirt, one sleeve pushed to her bicep, and jeans were sleep-rumpled, what looked to be a coffee stain blotting the end of one sleeve, but there was no weapon on her that he could see.

She held her hands up, brown eyes wide, as she plastered herself flat against the wall. A white towel stained with blood was crumpled in one hand, a long, shallow gash carving a jagged line down her other forearm to her elbow.

“Who are you?” Gil demanded.

“Who are _you_?” The woman shot back, eyes narrowing, and her voice turned hot as shock and fear morphed into anger.

Dani pulled out her badge. “NYPD. Now answer the question.”

The woman froze, a gripped immobility that lasted the span of a blink before she was all quick, fidgeting movements. Her eyes flicked to each of them, fingers twisting tight around the towel. “What . . .what are you doing here?”

“Answer the question,” Gil repeated, voice firm.

She hesitated again, eyes dropping down and to the left, and Malcolm could see stories and lies frantically forming behind her eyes.

He inched closer. “Breaking and entering is a crime,” he added, and her attention snapped up to him. “We can always take you down to the station instead.”

She swallowed heavily, blinking hard. “Um, nope, no thank you. I’m Charlotte. Charlotte Carson.” Nerves bled out into her voice, a thin and shaky tremble. “But my friends call me Charlie, which, you know, you can do whatever you like.”

Malcolm shared a quick look with Gil, remembering the names Abigail had given them. “You’re a friend of the Stines?”

She snorted, the sound more nervous than mocking. “I wouldn’t say anyone’s friends with them . . .” She trailed off at Gil’s unamused look and quickly amended. “Yes, I know them.”

“You normally break into your friends’ house?” JT asked.

“I didn’t break int-well, I did, but not really? I was invited here.” She pointed back towards the kitchen. “There used to be a key around back, but someone must have moved it, and I didn’t want to be stuck outside when it started to rain so . . .” she frowned down at her arm, the cut still oozing a sluggish trail of blood. “TV makes breaking a window look so much easier than it actually is.”

“Someone invited you here?” Dani asked.

Charlie nodded her head. “Yeah, not sure who though.” She laughed, a nervous, guffaw. “Which, saying that out loud, doesn’t make me sound very smart, does it?”

“Was there anyone else here when you arrived?” Gil asked.

Charlie’s shoulder twitched in a shrug. “I don’t know. I went out into the foyer to see but no one was there so I tried to find something in the kitchen to stop the bleeding.”

Gil’s eyes narrowed, assessing, before he seemed to deem her safe. Holstering his gun, he turned to where Edrisa was still planted a safe distance behind the table. “Edrisa, you said you had an emergency kit?”

Edrisa jolted at the question. “Um, yes, but . . .” Her nose scrunched up, eyes squinting, as she peered at the wound from her position. “I’m really only good at stitching up dead people. I did stitch up a friend’s cut once, but he moved around a lot more than I’m used to so the scar wasn’t the neatest.”

Charlie’s eyebrows disappeared behind her bangs. “Dead people . . .” She frowned at Edrisa warily, curling her arm closer to her chest. “I think I’d rather bleed to death, thanks.”

Edrisa glanced uncertainly at Gil, who gestured for her to go ahead, and turned to retrieve her bag from the foyer only to jerk away with a half-aborted shriek.

Malcolm was already moving before her shout had fully died, catching her as she stumbled back, and shifting to stand in front of her.

A vaguely human-shaped shadow lurked in the darkened hallway. The shape moved forward slowly, hands held out at their sides, fingers splayed, before they stepped into the room.

Malcolm’s first thought was _sour._

There was something pinched about the man’s expression, thin lips a breath away from curled disdain. Dirty blond hair was cut close to his scalp, and the suit he wore was frayed, the colors dulled from over-washing. The sleeves of his jacket and the hems of his pants ended inches short, revealing pale wrists and dark socks, the ill-fitting clothes making him look stretched, longer, and thinner than he actually was. But Malcolm’s attention caught on the watch around his wrist, a glint of finely cared for silver.

The man’s pale eyes darted from each of them, tension coiling tight in his shoulders. “What’s going on? Who are you people?”

“We could ask you the same thing,” JT said.

Cautiously, Charlie peered around Gil’s shoulder before sagging back against the wall with a dismissive flap of her hand. “Oh, that’s just Victor.”

Victor’s eyes cut to her, narrowed. “What are you doing here?”

“Same thing as you,” Charlie drawled, wrapping the towel back around her arm. “The text?”

Wariness dipped into confusion. Victor frowned at her before understanding slowly dawned. His shoulders slumped, a short, bark of a laugh cracking from his lips. “You got the text too,” he whispered, a faint, relieved smile curling his lips. “Of course you did.”

“Anyone care to enlighten us on this text?” Gil asked, exasperated.

Victor’s gaze slid back to him, relief fading into boredom. “Not really, no.”

JT peered behind him to the hallway beyond, frowning. “Where did you even come from?”

Victor’s smile was more of a condescending sneer. “I crawled out of the basement.”

With a frustrated huff, Gil made shooing motions with his hands. “All right, that’s it. Everyone out.”

Malcolm kept his attention on the two other people as they made their way back to the foyer. Victor glanced sideways at Charlie, but she brushed past him without a second glance, oblivious to the acidic look he shot her. So, caught up in watching them, Malcolm almost rammed into JT’s back when the other man jerked to an abrupt stop.

“You have got to be kidding me,” JT groaned.

Malcolm stepped around him to find Natalie standing under the chandelier, the flickering light sending shadows dancing across her face. She’d left the door open behind her, the dark sky framing her silhouette, gray streaks of rain already plummeting to the ground, and had her head tilted back, her gaze locked on the balcony.

“Is this where he died?” She asked, voice soft, and dropped her stare to look at them.

Behind them, Charlie jolted, fingers tightening around the towel. “Is this where who died?” She stammered.

Gil put his hands on his hips. “Don’t tell me you got a text too,” he said.

Wordlessly, she held out her phone. Malcolm moved to peer over Gil’s shoulder, softly reading the words out loud. Just two short messages from an unknown number.

_I have proof._

_Come home._

He glanced up to meet her stare, her lips twisted into a bitter smile. “I needed to know,” she whispered.

Malcolm glanced over his shoulder to Charlie and Victor. “You received a message like this too?”

They both nodded their heads.

“It was only a matter of time.”

Malcolm jerked his head back to the front door. Abigail stood a few paces inside the house, her gaze locked on the balcony, on the chandelier. Even when she looked down, her stare never landed on a person, but the floor, or the wall, or their shoulder. A splattering of gray marks left from the rain dusted her shoulders, drops glistening on her forehead. “Things never stay buried in the past for long.”

Another woman stood beside her, one hand lifted in a half-aborted move to comfort Abigail, left hanging and uncertain in the air before drifting slowly back to her side. Blonde curls fell to her shoulders, and she took in the house with visible trepidation, blue eyes wide, though her posture stayed locked in the smooth, elegant manner only accomplished by those who’d had it ground into them at a young age.

Pieces started clicking in Malcolm’s head. He pointed a finger at her. “Irene?”

Her stare dropped to him and she blinked, started. “Yes, I-do I know you?”

“Nope,” he said and looked back at Gil, dropping his voice to a whisper. “It looks like almost everyone from the picture is here.” He slid a smug look at JT. “Seems a little suspicious, don’t you think, Josiah?”

JT scowled. “Are you even trying, anymore?”

Malcolm grinned as Edrisa moved to stand beside him. She stood on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear. “Ms. Scarlet,” she said with a conspiratorial nod towards Charlie.

A smile twitched at the corners of his lips. He nodded at Victor. “Mr. Green.”

But there was an unsettling truth to the comparison, and he could see that uneasy realization coiling around the group. Charlie kept sneaking glances towards the front door, Irene kept fiddling with her left earring, and Victor seemed content to scowl at everyone. Abigail was the only one who seemed comfortable in the house. A genuine ease settled on her shoulders as she took it all in.

“Abby?”

Simon blew through the front doors, and Malcolm caught the flash of surprise on Natalie's face, the flicker of annoyance on Victor's. Simon was out of breath, panic raw on his face as he made a beeline for Abigail, hair wet and blades of dead grass stuck to his black shoes. “What are you doing here?” He whispered, reaching out a hand to his sister. “You shouldn’t be here.”

She gave him a strained smile, but stayed where she was, running her hands up and down her forearms, shifting away when he tried to guide her to the door.

“You got the text message too?” Charlie asked.

Startling, Simon frowned at her, seeming to realize the others in the house for the first time. With the ease of practice, he folded the bleeding panic away. His posture straightened, one hand pushing his hair back, and he frowned. “Text? What text?” His eyes narrowed when they landed on Malcolm and the others, rage peeking through. “And what are you doing in my house? You have no-“

“I gave them the key,” Natalie interrupted, arms crossed. “I thought they might be able to find something to help with the case.”

“You’re not a part of this family,” Simon snapped. “You had no right inviting them onto the property.”

“Wait, wait, you all receive a cryptic text to come to an abandoned, haunted house after your friend was brutally murdered and you actually came?” Edrisa snorted. “Well, we all know who wouldn’t last long in a horror movie.”

“What text?” Simon repeated, voice tight with annoyance.

Charlie frowned at them, alarmed. “A friend of mine? Who died?”

Simon’s lips pressed into a thin line, the ghost of pain flickering across his face. “Marcus.”

“At first glance, it looked like severe blunt force trauma, most likely caused by a fall,” Malcolm said cheerfully, and everyone’s attention snapped to him. He took a step farther into the room, gesturing to his head with a flippant flick of his hand. “The side of his head was smashed in and his bones were broken, though, all of that was done after he’d died. The true cause of death was the punctured lung. Essentially, he suffocated. Truly gruesome stuff.”

“Bright,” Dani whispered, horrified.

Gil pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do you not remember our discussion about tact?” He hissed.

But Malcolm was too focused on everyone else’s reactions. Abigail folded in on herself with a sharp wince, the grip on her arms tightening, while Simon’s face paled, expression wavering between horror and outrage. A spasm of pain flickered across Charlie’s face, there and gone in the space of a blink, but he could see the same thread of recognition in her and Irene’s eyes, the same flicker of dread, while Victor’s expression remained the same bored, half-lidded look.

Simon took a step towards him, lips twisted in a snarl. “How dare you-“ He hissed.

Ignoring him, Malcolm turned to Victor. “You don’t look that surprised.”

Victor shrugged a thin shoulder. “Marcus was always going to be the first of us to die. The only surprising thing about all this is that it didn’t happen sooner.”

Simon shot him a dismissive glance laced with poison. “Ignore him. Hopping from one dead-end job to the next tends to make a man bitter.”

Rage chewed through the boredom in Victor’s eyes as quickly as a flame flared to life on a match. “Not all of us could gain success by clinging to our father’s coattails,” Victor snarled, and Malcolm mentally changed his earlier assessment. The man wasn’t sour, but bitter.

“Oh, yes, it would have been much more honorable to wallow in mediocrity. At least then I’d have had your shallow sense of pride to cling to,” Simon drawled. “How, exactly, is that working out for you?”

“That’s enough,” Gil said, snapping up a hand to cut off Victor before he could speak.

Victor’s jaw clenched, fingers curled into fists at his side, and Malcolm watched as he struggled to reign his anger back down. A huff of a breath, a muscle feathering in his jaw, and he managed to stuff most of it behind a twitchy shrug, one hand moving to trace the tips of his fingers across the face of his watch.

“I’m starting to get a headache,” JT grumbled.

But Malcolm felt more invigorated than he had all day. The silent house was now alive, filled with people hiding secrets that he could unearth with each small, unconscious gesture they made. He carefully watched each one, cataloging every movement, every twitch.

Charlie had found a spot on the wall to lean her shoulder against and had been watching the argument with unrestrained glee, while Irene looked embarrassed by the display, nervously twisting a blonde curl around her finger. Abigail had wandered over to the vase of flowers and Simon had followed a few distracted steps before his spat with Victor had stopped him. Natalie was leaning against the doorway a few paces away from Abigail, arms crossed as she watched the others.

“Okay, so which one of you sent the text?” Charlie asked. “’Cause as far as jokes go, it’s pretty lame.”

Simon threw his hands into the air with an exasperated sigh. “What text?”

When no one answered, Charlie’s smile wavered. “Then who sent it?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Malcolm said. “The killer did. They’re gathering you all into one place.”

Irene curled a hand to her chest, a glisten of fear in her eyes. “Why?”

“I assume it’s about whatever you all are hiding.”

“And who says we’re hiding anything?” Simon snapped, voice the bitter bite of ice.

“You did answer a random text message claiming to have proof,” Dani said. “That’s not something innocent people do.”

Simon scoffed. “That’s your proof? Answering a text makes someone guilty?”

“Well,” Malcolm said. “Then there’s the small matter of the blackmail.”

Irene’s blue eyes widened. “How did you-“

“How about everyone stops talking unless told to speak,” Simon interjected, ignoring the glare Irene shot him.

“Then there’s the photo found at the crime scene,” Malcolm continued. “One that shows all of you standing in front of this very house. Well, almost all of you.” He pointed at Simon, Victor, and Natalie. “You three weren’t there.”

Victor glowered at him. “I was there,” he snapped.

Simon pinched the bridge of his nose, hissing out a breath through clenched teeth. “Are you an imbecile?”

“Why would that make him an imbecile?” Dani asked. “Is there some reason he shouldn’t mention that he was there?”

“Did none of you hear the part about the killer gathering us all into one place?” Charlie interrupted, holding her hands out incredulously. “’Cause that part seems far more important and alarming than anything else.”

“Okay, so, practically all of you were there, and the two that weren’t could be considered guilty by association.” Malcolm drifted around the room, keeping each person in his sight, watching every flicker of emotion across their face. “Except for Zane.”

Irene pushed a strand of hair back with a nervous flutter of her fingers. “Zane’s always late,” she said.

“Unless there’s food involved,” muttered Charlie.

“But Zane isn’t the only person missing,” Malcolm said. He stopped at the front of the foyer, the double doors leading out looming behind him, in the perfect spot to keep everyone in his line of sight. He could see the rest of his team doing the same; watching the suspects while their attention was focused on him. Malcolm clasped his hands in front of him with a sharp slap that made Irene jolt. “Alex was in the picture too.”

There was a moment of stifled, surprised silence and then Victor scoffed.

“Malone?” He said, incredulous. His lips twitched into a disbelieving smile. “You think this is about _Malone_? That little loner was a nobody.”

“Yes,” Malcolm answered. “I think it’s about the kid who conveniently went missing after spending a night with all of you.”

“There was nothing convenient about it,” Simon said. “He ran away, and something must have happened to him. Tragic, yes, but it had nothing to do with us.”

“Ah, so the fact that he was in a picture found at a crime scene where the killer more or less called Marcus a liar was just a coincidence?” Malcolm said.

“Considering it was done by a highly delusional psychopath,” Simon said. “I would say that it isn’t so far-fetched an idea.”

“You have to admit, there was something very specific about the crime scene.” Malcolm’s eyes cut to Abigail and her eyes dropped away from him to the wooden floor. “It was staged like that for a reason.”

She didn’t look up at him, but her lips tightened into a bloodless line.

“This is ridiculous,” spat Simon and turned to Gil. “I thought we’d agreed it was Cartwright?”

Charlie’s face scrunched up in bewilderment. “Who’s Cartwright?”

Victor looked up from where he had been peering down a hole in the floor. “Oh, that’s the guy whose wife Marcus killed.”

“And how do you know that?” Gil asked.

“Marcus told me.” Victor grinned, a movement that was more a baring of teeth. “He never liked to get drunk alone, and he always gets so chatter after the second drink.”

Malcolm glanced at Natalie, curious to see how she’d react to the news that her fiance hadn’t stayed sober for long. She had her head tilted back against the wall, her eyes closed, the only sign of emotion, the only sign of anger, was the crease between her eyes. His stare drifted a few paces to her left, where Abigail stood by the stairs.

She was still beside the flowers, now seemingly oblivious to the conversation around her. She lifted a hand, traced the edges of the petals with a delicate, light touch. She seemed to be studying them, head tilted, making note of their brown edges. He watched her and thought of the haunted look in her eyes when she spoke about Alex at the motel, and of ghosts, lingering forever in one slowly decaying spot.

It struck him then as he looked back at the vase of flowers, that maybe they weren’t a decoration or a sign of remorse. He looked at that vase, carefully balanced on the newel post, and he saw the image of flowers set in straight lines in front of tombstones. A comfort for the living and the dead.

Malcolm made his way over to Abigail. Vaguely, he could hear Simon talking about Marcus passing a breathalyzer test, another mention of a tragic accident, and he filed it away for later, all too familiar with how tragic accidents could trail a family like a shadow.

He could feel Simon’s eyes tracking him as he drew closer, could feel him shifting to follow, but Dani stepped neatly in front of him. As she started asking him questions about Cartwright, Malcolm came to a stop a few steps away from Abigail. He couldn’t ask her about Alex, not outright, not when Simon was watching him like a hawk over Dani’s shoulder, but he could maybe come at it from a different angle.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” He asked instead.

She glanced at him, surprised, one hand still absently close to the flowers. He could see understanding in her eyes, in the way her lips twitched in a rueful smile. “Of course.”

“I’m not so sure, myself. I think ghosts are just guilt preying on your mind.”

Her stare dropped back down to the flowers, teeth sinking into her bottom lip.

He tilted his head, trying to keep sight of her expression through the fall of her hair. “They say Bainbridge could hear his children’s cries at night, until they bothered him so much he killed his wife and himself. Rumor has it, if you listen hard enough, you can still hear him pleading with them to leave him alone. I think it was guilt over not being able to protect his children that made him think he heard them.”

A mirthless snort dragged his attention to Natalie. She had opened her eyes and was staring at the group, one arm crossed over her stomach, the tips of her other hand brushing her lips. Dropping her arms, she turned her attention to him and shrugged a shoulder at his questioning look. “That’s not the story Marcus told me.”

“No?”

There was a bitter anger in her brown eyes, the same he’d seen back in the interview room when she’d talked about her father. “Bainbridge’s wife killed their children. She slipped just enough poison into their afternoon tea to slowly chip away at their health. He found the bag of poison hidden underneath her jewelry a few weeks after they’d buried their last child, a little boy no older than five. So, he took the poison and he slipped some into the food of the cook who’d prepared the tea, and the maid who’d taken the drinks to his children, and the gardener who’d planted the flowers his wife had gotten the poison from. He had just enough left to slip into his wife’s tea. It wasn’t enough to kill her, but it made her so weak that by the time she realized something was wrong, she could only crawl across the floor. She made it halfway across the foyer before he caught up and slit her throat.”

“And then he threw himself out the window?” Malcolm asked.

“What else was there for him to do?” Abigail asked softly. One finger lightly tapped a petal, and it curled away from the rest, slowly drifting to the ground.

“He didn’t exactly have an escape plan,” Natalie added.

But looking at Abigail, at the dulled resignation in her eyes, Malcolm wasn’t sure that was what she had meant.

“Well,” Malcolm said, eyebrows rising. “That’s certainly more . . .”

“Gruesome?” A flicker of a smile tugged at Natalie’s lips. “Marcus did always prefer those types of stories.” She looked at Abigail, almost regretful. “But no ghosts.”

“Not a believer?”

“I think when someone dies, they’re gone for good. All that’s left is what people remember and even that eventually fades.” She stared down at her ring, voice softening. “There’s enough horror in that, don’t you think?”

He opened his mouth to answer when across the room Charlie clapped her hands together and pushed herself off the wall. “Well,” she declared. “I need a drink.”

She slipped past the others, ignoring Gil’s gesture for her to stop, and disappeared towards the kitchen.

“Well, whether it was a crazy killer or an alleged blackmailer who sent the text, I don’t care.” Victor made to move towards the front door with a breezy wave of his hand. “I’m not sticking around to find out.”

“Yes, I think we’re all leaving and heading back to the station,” Gil said sternly. “We have questions for each of you.”

“Unless you’re going to press charges, we don’t have to talk to you,” Simon said. He moved to his sister, slipping between her and Malcolm.

“We can always charge you for breaking and entering,” JT said.

“This is my house,” Simon answered. “And I’m not going to press charges against any of them, so it looks like your work is done.”

He moved to leave, one hand around Abigail’s shoulder to guide her out, when a piercing scream split the air.

Twisting, Malcolm sprinted towards the kitchen, heart leaping. He could feel the others on his heels as he tore through the dining room and jerked the door open and came to a jerking halt.

Charlie had pressed herself against the kitchen counter, an empty cup beside her, the body of a man crumpled on the floor in front of the freezer. A knife stuck out of his chest and his eyes had been gouged out, gory holes locked onto the ceiling, blood sliding like tear tracks down to his temples.

“Well,” Malcolm said, breaking the heavy quiet. “I take it that’s Zane.”

Charlie practically crawled on top of the counter, chest heaving. “I didn’t do it,” she gasped. “I swear he was already dead. He just . . .he just fell out of the freezer.”

“All of you need to back away now,” Gil commanded and both he and JT guided the others back into the foyer, despite the cries of protest. Shakily, Charlie slid off the counter and scurried around the body, pressing a shaking hand to her mouth.

Once they were gone, Edrisa dropped into a crouch beside Zane, pressing her fingers against his neck. She glanced up, locking eyes with Malcolm. “No pulse,” she said. “But he’s still warm. He hasn’t been dead long.”

“Which means the killer might still be close,” Dani said. Her eyes cut to the windows peering into the backyard, its features obscured by the rain.

“Not only that,” Malcolm muttered and crouched down beside the body. The knife was jabbed deep into the victim’s chest, buried to the hilt. “Whoever did this had to get close. The victim would have seen them coming.” He glanced up as Gil stepped back into the room. “He probably knew the killer.”

Malcolm pushed himself to his feet, slipped past Gil to head back to the foyer. Frantic voices tangled and overlapped each other as JT carefully watched each person. Malcolm’s mind ticked back to Edrisa’s report on Marcus, on the lack of defensive wounds, to the knife slid between his ribs. To the scattered arrival of each person to the house. Charlie in the kitchen, Victor appearing from nowhere, Simon arriving last.

The killer was someone both Marcus and Zane knew. Someone they trusted enough to let them get close without raising suspicion. And who knew them better than the very people in this room?

Malcolm came to a stop and slowly everyone quieted, their eyes turning to him.

“The killer isn’t just close. They’re in this very room,” Malcolm declared, looking at each of them in turn. “One of you stabbed Zane.”


	4. The Ghost

Thunder rattled the windows before crumbling into a low growl that somehow didn’t swallow the sound of Gil’s long-suffering sigh.

There was a brief pause as the group gaped at Malcolm in varying degrees of disbelief. The fragile stillness that had settled over the house swelled, and swelled, and then shattered.

Everyone started talking at once, frantic accusations and fearful anger overlapping and rising to a crescendo that rivaled the storm raging outside. Panic and outrage were living things, whip-like and snarling, growing until they filled the room to bursting, and Malcolm could feel his own excitement mirror it.

Dani shot him an annoyed look over her shoulder as she tried to help JT calm everyone down, and Malcolm twitched his shoulder in a small shrug, only vaguely apologetic.

Gil shifted to stand beside him, arms crossed over his chest. “It would have been better if you’d kept that theory between us,” he muttered.

But Malcolm disagreed. Someone in the room was the killer, he was sure of it, and from the way Gil watched them with narrowed eyed sharpness, he knew it too. Each suspect knew the others more than Malcolm did; they knew, even if they would never admit out loud, which one of them could kill. Plant the suggestion in their minds, and they would subconsciously reveal who they thought it could be. A few pairs of eyes cut to Victor and away quickly. Irene shifted a few steps away from Simon, who pointedly refused to look at anyone, choosing instead to yell in JT’s unamused face. But there was a careful way he did not look at his sister that spoke volumes.

Abigail appeared unbothered by the noise. She sat down on the first step, a slow, sinking collapse of a movement, her arms wrapped around her knees, content to watch white light dance in vivid flashes across the windows with each flicker of lightning. Natalie hovered a few steps away, and watched the others with her head tilted slightly, brown eyes flitting to and from each person.

And Charlie . . .

Blinking, Malcolm glanced around the room before looking over his shoulder, where there was nothing but the empty dining room.

And Charlie was gone.

He turned to Gil. “Where did-”

The front door slammed open, the noise sharp and unexpected enough to slice through the rising arguments as swift and sure as a scythe. Charlie stood in the doorway, strands of hair stuck to the side of her face, drenched clothes clinging and dripping a steady puddle on the floor underneath her. Malcolm caught a glimpse of the storm raging in wild flashes behind her, heavy sheets of rain tossed sideways by the wind, before she slammed the door shut.

“Someone slashed our tires,” she gasped out, one shaking fist gripped around a pair of car keys. She took a stumbled step forward, wiping her wet bangs off her forehead with the back of her hand, her eyes wide, voice tight with panic. “And mine wouldn’t even start.”

“You tried to leave?” Dani asked, voice sharp.

With an incredulous look, Charlie jabbed a finger towards the kitchen. “I’m sorry, was I supposed to stay after the _murdered corpse_ fell out of the freezer?”

“Considering you’re a suspect in said corpse’s murder, yes,” JT said.

Charlie spluttered out a scoff, shaking her head as she moved to a corner of the room to squeeze water out of her hair, and beside Malcolm, Gil buried his face in his hands with a strangled groan.

“Are you okay?” Malcolm whispered.

“Just one month,” he moaned into his palms. “I just want to go one month without something happening to my car. Is that too much to ask?”

“At least it wasn’t something I did,” Malcolm said.

Gil dropped his hands to glare at him. “Not helping, Bright.” He nodded at JT and Dani. “Check it out, but be careful.”

As the two headed out the door, Gil dropped his voice to a low whisper. “Any candidates?”

Malcolm licked his lips, trying to move his lips as little as possible. Across the room, Simon watched them like a hawk, eyes narrowed. “She was in the kitchen,” he murmured, eyes on Charlie. “But Simon was the last one to make it. And we still don’t know where Victor came from or how long he’d been here.”

“Simon also didn’t get a text,” Gil added. “And he wasn’t in the photo. So why is he even here? Just to keep an eye on his sister? And why did the killer send Natalie a text?"

“He is a control freak,” Malcolm muttered. He could see it from the pristine clothes to the way he visibly tensed every single time someone else opened their mouth to speak. But it was still strange that an apparent outsider felt such a strong urge to control something he wasn’t involved in. "And maybe the killer thinks Marcus told her what happened and she didn't turn him in." He thought of Jessica, of all the people her treated her as being just as bad as Martin. "That could be enough to make her guilty in their eyes."

“Maybe one of them is trying to cover their tracks,” Gil suggested. “Kill off everyone who knows so they don’t have to worry about it getting out. Or maybe they’re trying to weed out the blackmailer.”

Malcolm tapped his fingers against his lips, unsure. Those types of murderers relied on secrecy, bodies killed and hidden in forgotten places, not deaths laid out like a stage. Plus, there had been an anger thrumming underneath the surface of the crime scene, a certain type of rage that made it seem personal.

The door opened again as Dani and JT slipped back inside, both leaving wet footprints behind them as they made their way back to Gil, expressions grim.

“It’s not just the tires,” JT said in a hushed whisper. “The car won’t start. Our radios are dead.”

“Between that and the lack of cell service, we can't reach backup,” Dani added and raked her hand through her hair, pushing back the wet curls clinging to her cheeks and forehead, wincing when her fingers caught on knotted strands. 

A humorless smile crossed Gil's lips. "The brass is expecting an update in a few hours. If they can't get in touch with me directly, they will send someone out here to find me."

"Great," JT muttered. "We just have to make it that long."

“So, not only did one of us kill Zane and stuff his body in the freezer, but we slashed everyone’s tires?” Victor called out, his voice a nasal drawl. “And how were we supposed to have done that without anyone noticing?”

“I am so glad you asked.” Malcolm bounded over to where Victor stood and snatched the other man’s arm before he could step away. Twisting it around to peer at the watch on his wrist, he noted both the time and the make of the model before Victor jerked his arm away with a disgruntled huff.

“Well,” Malcolm said smoothly. “We’ve only been here for thirty minutes, and I’d say you all didn’t start popping out of the woodwork until fifteen-ish minutes after we’d arrived. You could have killed Zane, stuffed him away before anyone came, and then bided your time until we were distracted enough for you to sneak out and ruin the cars.”

Irene stared at Malcolm, face pale, and tucked a blond curl behind her ear with a nervous flick of her fingers.“Why do you think it was one of us?”

“Zane was stabbed in the front,” Malcolm answered. He moved around the room as he talked, clocking every small movement, every flicker of emotion, watching as they turned to keep him in their line of sight. “He would have noticed the knife coming at him. So, if his guard had been up, he would have put up a fight, but there weren’t any defensive wounds that I saw. His attacker got close enough to stab him before he could react and if you had received a vaguely threatening anonymous text, would you have let a stranger get that close?” He gestured to them all with a broad sweep of his hand. “Anyone of you could have done it.”

Simon narrowed his eyes and planted his hands on his hips. “That sounds like a lot of guesswork,” he said.

“Guesswork based heavily on evidence,” Edrisa added, slipping back into the foyer from where she had been examining Zane's body in the kitchen. “The knife was set at a slightly downward angle, and it was buried deep enough that the killer would have had to put a considerable amount of force behind it.” She pulled her arm back behind her head and mimed slicing down. “There’s a very high chance he would have seen the knife coming.”

Irene lifted her hands with a slight shake of her head, as if she could ward off the words and the images they created, and backed away a step. “Okay, okay, that’s enough.”

“I don’t know, Simon, their theory sounds pretty solid to me,” Victor said, one pale eyebrow raised tauntingly. “And you were the last person to get here. Who knows what you could have done?”

Simon scoffed as he turned to look at him. “Are you suggesting I killed Zane?”

“And Marcus.”

Charlie’s head snapped up from where she had been twisting the bottom of her shirt in the corner of the room, squeezing a steady stream of water onto the floor, eyes narrowed in a glare. “Shut up, Victor,” she snapped.

“Maybe you got tired of making sure he didn’t drunkenly blab everything to some stranger in a bar.” Victor kept talking, a strange, fierce light in his eyes. “Maybe his supposed reawakening freaked you out. Maybe you were afraid he was going to sell you all out.”

“And what? My brilliant plan was to bring attention to myself by kill-will you stop pacing around us like a shark?” Simon snapped at Malcolm. “Two seconds ago you said it was Cartwright or someone angry about Malone.”

Malcolm shrugged. “I was wrong.”

He felt Dani’s suspicious stare burn the side of his face, heard JT’s scoff in his ears, and Gil looked at him, eyebrows raised, but Malcolm ignored them, carefully evaluating each suspect.

Revenge killers were driven by rage, and rage was never stagnant. It built on itself until it was bursting at the seams. It grew and grew until one tiny moment, one small suggestion, sparked it into a wildfire, uncontrollable and uncontainable. He circled them and thought of his own father, master of all emotions except for one. He thought of the word _liar_ , slowly eroding as rage took over. Whoever the killer was, they were angry, and if this was about Alex, then that meant they cared about him.

And that type of anger, so intricately intertwined with love, was never easy to hide.

“Who was Alex, anyway?” He asked. “Someone whose life was so unremarkable that his disappearance warranted nothing more than a half-hearted search, and then he was forgotten in a matter of weeks.” He hoped Gil caught on, hoped the other man knew he was telling lies to get a rise out of the killer, that he knew Gil had put everything he had into the investigation. “Fifteen years is a long time for someone to wait before seeking revenge.”

Simon refused to look away, chin lifted, blue eyes blazing in a silent challenge. Irene looked ill, her eyes closed, and head tilted away, fingers tugging at her earring. Charlie looked abashed, gaze dropped to the floor, while Victor’s lips were curled in a tight smile. Natalie, however, watched Victor, a fierce intensity burning in her dark eyes, and Malcolm watched as recognition slowly dawned across her face and that intensity ignited into rage, all-consuming and wild.

Abigail stayed seated on the bottom step, kept her eyes locked on the windows, but there was a tension to her posture now, a tightness in the way her fingers curled into fists on top of her knees, that told him every single one of his words were landing.

“Obviously, if someone cared, they would have done something about it earlier,” Malcolm continued, eyes sweeping across the others. “Alex doesn’t matter. He was no one.”

The sound of breaking glass caused them to jolt, both Irene and Edrisa letting out choked-off, startled shrieks, and Malcolm jerked his head towards the noise. Abigail was standing and the vase had fallen to the ground, shattered into pieces against the wooden floor. She stared down at it, shards of ceramic and broken petals in a slowly spreading pool of water, fingers curled into shaking fists at her side.

“He wasn’t no one,” she whispered, voice hoarse but burning. She dragged her stare up, gaze fixed on Malcolm, anger and something else, something more, sparking in her eyes. “He wasn’t no one.”

Simon moved first, stepping between her and the others as if he could block her from their shocked stares. “Abby,” he whispered, one hand lifted.

“They did date,” Victor said.

“Oh my gosh,” Charlie exclaimed in exasperation. “And here I thought people grew out of the teacher’s pet phase.”

Malcolm ignored them, kept his attention focused on Abigail, tried to keep her looking at him, and not at Simon. “You think it could be about him, then?” He pressed. “Why?”

Her chin tilted up. “I think we deserve whatever’s coming.” Her words fell like stones, heavy and weighted and dragging through the air.

Simon turned, partly facing them, partly facing his sister, one hand held up like he could ward them off, like he could brush her words out of their memories. “She doesn’t mean it,” he breathed.

But the damage had already been done. The mood in the room shifted; five people suspicious of each other changing to four people suspicious of one.

It was only in the tense silence that followed that they heard it. A dragging creak from overhead. A sound that could easily have been dismissed if it hadn’t been followed by another. And another. Malcolm tilted his head back, eyes tracking the creaks of protesting wood as they traveled from one part of the ceiling to the other.

Footsteps.

The sound disappeared, fading and lost under the moaning wind tearing at the house outside.

“ _What the hell was that?_ ” Charlie wheezed.

“It was probably nothing,” Dani said, but the tight expression on her face belied her words. She looked at Gil, even as she kept speaking. “Old houses make weird noises all the time.”

Simon shot Malcolm a look laced with acid. “Or it could be the actual killer.”

“Or maybe it’s the ghost,” sneered Victor.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out.” Malcolm grinned. “Let’s split up, gang!”

He made it a half step to the stairs before JT snatched his arm and dragged him back with an incredulous, “Are you out of your damn mind?”

“I thought we established that a long time ago,” Malcolm grumbled, jerking his arm out of the other man’s grasp. He dropped his voice to a whisper so the civilians wouldn’t hear. “Someone has to go up there to see what that was, and we can’t leave everyone else alone.”

“As much as I hate to say it, Bright’s right,” Gil said grimly.

With a frown, JT regarded the shadow draped stairs, an air of resigned trepidation settling over his shoulders. “Fine. I’ll go.”

“Then let me go with you,” Malcolm said. “Two is better than one.”

JT slid him a sideways glance. “No offense, but with your track record, my chances of surviving are better if you don’t come.”

“Very funny,” Malcolm said, voice dry.

“Dani, you and JT go with Bright, but be careful.” Gil looked pointedly at Malcolm. “And no unnecessary risks. Edrisa and I will stay down here.”

“Oh, c’mon, boss,” JT pleaded.

“He can help,” Gil assured him.

“I do see dead people,” Malcolm added cheerfully while Gil shot him an exasperated look.

Dani pinched the bridge of her nose with a heavy sigh and JT frowned at him in dread. “Why do I get the feeling you’re not joking?” He asked.

“Um.” Edrisa hesitantly raised a hand. “No offense, but I would really rather go with the group that has more guns.”

Gil stared at a spot in the wall with the exhausted expression of a man regretting every decision that had led him to this point. “I need you to examine the body some more. See if you can find anything else that can help us.”

“Right, yes, of course.” Edrisa glanced towards the kitchen, where Zane’s body was still stretched out on the floor, and twisted her hands together. “That’s a smart idea.”

Dani and JT headed towards the stairs, pulling out their flashlights, and Malcolm moved to follow them when Natalie pushed herself away from the wall and stepped beside him.

She gripped his arm, sudden and tight. “That’s him,” she hissed, eyes locked on Victor. “He’s the man Marcus met with. I’m sure of it.”

Malcolm froze and glanced back at Victor before looking at Natalie, the anger contorting her face sending a prickle of unease across his skin. “That doesn’t mean he’s the one who killed Marcus,” Malcolm whispered back.

She dragged her stare away from Victor to look at him and rage still burned in her eyes, untangled from grief. “Doesn’t mean he wasn’t.”

Malcolm lifted a hand to grip the one still wrapped around his arm. “We’ll figure it out,” he assured her, insistent. “Let _us_ figure it out.”

Her lips pressed into a thin line and for a moment he thought she was going to argue, but then she gave a jerky nod of her head and stepped back. He watched as she retreated back to her spot against the wall, still sneaking poisonous glances towards an oblivious Victor. Malcolm caught Gil’s eyes and tilted his head towards Victor and then towards Natalie. Gil glanced over at the man, pale and washed out under the flickering light of the chandelier before he looked back at Malcolm, nodding his head in understanding.

He spared one last glance at Natalie before quickly making his way up the stairs to catch up with the others. He caught up with the others and as they moved across the balcony, he thought back over the suspects’ reactions. Abigail and Natalie had been the only ones to show anger, two different types. Abigail quiet and simmering, an anger edged with indignation, while Natalie’s had been bottomless, sparking with raw grief. But the farther away from the foyer’s flickering golden light and the low murmur of voices they got, the less Malcolm thought about what happened, his analysis slipping away under the slow curl of unease.

As they slipped through the darkened hallways, footsteps quiet like ghosts of their own, the more Malcolm realized the house wasn’t really a dying thing like he had thought. After the wide spread of the foyer, the walls seemed to crowd in, the house pressing too close. Rain pounded against the roof, tapped along the windows, the skitter of a thousand hushed whispers. The wooden floor groaned underneath their feet, long, dragging moans that raised the hair on the back of his neck. Darkness clung, thick and heavy to the walls, peeling away with each quick flash of lightning in a way that created shifting movements at the edges of his vision. There were times when the patter of rain sounded more like the patter of small feet. When the wind wailing outside sounded more like the wails of a grief-stricken parent.

At one point, they walked down a hallway lined with windows, streaks of rain like smears of blood down the glass. He caught brief flashes of tree limbs in the distance, a tangled mass clawing for the sky, writhing in the fierce wind. The movement too alive, too monstrous. The house had woken up in the thunderstorm and Malcolm couldn’t help but think of the stories he’d skimmed. The tales of the house trapping people inside and refusing to let them leave.

They opened every door they could find, scanning the darkened rooms for any killers that might be lurking inside, and Malcolm soon lost whatever tenuous grip he’d had on the house’s layout. He usually considered himself an expert on overly large, sprawling mansions, but there were too many additions to Bainbridge Manor’s original floor plan to keep track of, too many shadowed hallways stretching out to added wings. Too many rooms that seemed too small, hallways that seemed to end too abruptly or that stretched out to darkened lengths.

A loud _crack_ echoed down the hallway, sharp and violent, and Dani and JT stepped neatly in front of Malcolm, guns snapped up. Tense seconds passed with the speed of hours as they held their breaths, waiting. When nothing else followed, Dani slowly lowered her gun, posture still tense.

“I’m sure it was just a loose shutter,” Dani said, voice tight. “That’s all it was.”

Once his heart started beating again, Malcolm glanced sidelong at JT, noting the lines of tension dug deep into his face. “What’s the matter?” He teased in a soft whisper. “Afraid the ghost of Bainbridge is going to get you?”

JT snorted, but didn’t lower his gun, didn’t tear his eyes away from the hallway ahead. “I ain’t afr-” He cut himself off quickly, snapping up a hand in warning before Malcolm could speak. “Don’t you dare,” he growled.

Dani brushed by as she slipped ahead, the corner of her lips quirking. “Ain’t afraid of no ghosts?” She finished.

Dani and Malcolm shared a quick, strained smile at JT’s low grumble before they continued inching forward. They’d made it halfway down the hallway before a sound stuttered to life, freezing them in place again. A scratch, a tear, followed by warbly, staticky piano notes. Music, old and faint, drifting on skipping notes down the hallway.

But there was something else. Another sound that lurked under the light keys. A tattered, hitching noise. Separate from the music, but just as reverberant. A chill slid down Malcolm’s spine.

Sobbing. Someone was sobbing.

It was low and incomprehensible. Raw emotion pressed into sound and it twisted his stomach into a knot of dread.

“Oh. Hell. No.” JT hissed. He sucked in a deep breath and shared a glance with Dani before they both started inching down the hallway towards the noise.

Malcolm moved to follow and then froze. It was like a hot breath on the back of his neck, a prickle of goosebumps across delicate skin, and just under the sound of the storm, he heard an almost inaudible creak of wooden floorboards that came from behind instead of ahead. Malcolm stood, frozen, as that sudden and primal sense that something was standing right behind him crawled across his skin like a wave of insects. Malcolm twisted around, snapping his flashlight up.

There was nothing but the empty hallway, stretching out in front of him. But the end of his flashlight beam caught the door at the very end in the middle of swinging open, a slow, drifting movement until it tapped the wall with a gentle nudge. Through the open doorway, he caught faint movement from inside the room, a languid, swaying motion, hardly more than shadows, but almost hypnotic.

Malcolm stood rooted to the spot, fingers tight around his flashlight. It was possible, he thought, that JT hadn’t closed the door all the way. That the house with all its drafts had nudged the door open again. It was possible that there was a simple, harmless explanation.

It was also possible that a killer had slipped into the room and been in too much of a hurry to close the door behind them.

He glanced back at Dani and JT, nothing more than dark silhouettes slowly moving away from him towards the music, towards the sobbing, beams of light arching ahead of them.

It might be a trick. It might be a trap. It might be nothing.

But that sobbing was something, and he couldn’t risk taking them away from it to investigate something that might be nothing more than a drafty house.

He could hear Gil’s voice in his head, telling him to be smart, to be careful, but Malcolm had never learned his lesson about ignoring mysterious opened doors, so he swallowed his unease and he crept down the hallway.

The music kept playing. The voice kept sobbing. Forming into words now, pleas begged on hushed and hitching breaths, and Malcolm tried not to think of a man driven insane by the deaths of his children, tried not to think of all the others who heard his voice in the middle of the night, begging to be left in peace. Tried not to think of a man driven to kill by the deaths of his children.

Malcolm breathed in slow and steady and fought the urge to glance over his shoulder every time he thought he saw movement in his peripheral vision. It was just his mind playing tricks on him. He’d been thinking about ghosts and murderers all day, now the shadows and his imagination were trying to bring them to light.

Slowly, Malcolm slipped into the room. It was what he assumed to be the master bedroom, a wide, empty space. There was nowhere for a killer to hide, unless they’d tucked themselves inside the armoire shoved against the wall. The earthly scent of mold tickled his nose, making his lips curl, and his flashlight caught a vein of it on the wall, dark spots blooming up the wallpaper in a crawling vein. Wind whistled through the broken glass door leading out to a balcony, toying with the edge of a damp curtain; the cause of the languid, swaying movement he’d noticed from the hallway.

The shadowed shape of a bookshelf loomed against the wall, the wood warped and misshapen. Malcolm shone his flashlight over the shelves and their meager contents: a pile of dust-covered books left forgotten and rotted, an empty glass coated in dust, the glint of eyes and the sharp curve of a smile, an empty pictur-

Heart stuttering in his chest, Malcolm jerked the light back. The flashlight glinted against an old mask, shadows pooling in hollow eyes and a wicked smile. He choked out a relieved laugh, glad he hadn’t brought the others with him. JT would never have let him live that down.

He did one final sweep of the room, his flashlight passing over the bookshelf, the armoire, the door to the balcony, and he stopped, ice sliding through his veins, and slowly brought his light back to the balcony door. The wind kept toying with the edge of the curtain, only offering him brief glimpses of the balcony beyond, but through that lazy sway of fabric, he could just make out the hazy shape of someone standing out on the balcony, their back to him. The wind pulled the curtain back, pushed it away again, and Malcolm blinked and he blinked and the figure was still there, unbothered by the storm tearing outside.

“Now would be a great time to be hallucinating,” Malcolm whispered.

The wind pulled and the wind pushed, and that hazy figure started to turn, slowly, away from the railing, and the music played and the sobbing continued, filling the room until it was a buzz in Malcolm’s ears. He drifted forward as if pulled by an invisible string and the curtain shifted back and forth and the figure kept turning and then disappeared.

Malcolm felt more than saw movement to his left, a warning in prickled skin as the door to the armoire slammed open, slapping against the wall with a sharp _crack_. Malcolm twisted around as a dark shape flew out from inside and lurched towards him. He opened his mouth, a shout building in his throat, when the shape lashed out. Something hard collided with his head, a starburst of pain exploded in his temple, and the nothing.


	5. The Nightmare

A body bled out in the living room.

He couldn’t see it. But he could feel it. Blood soaking thick into the white carpet. Droplets of scarlet scattered across the arm of the couch. Coating the edge of a knife dropped forgotten on the floor. A body bled out in the living room and he knew it was important, somehow, he knew he needed to see it. But his father was crouched in front of him, hands cuffed behind his back, and yet still demanding all of his attention.

Blue and red police lights writhed across the marble floor, forming shapes that danced along the tiles. That lit up his father’s smile, gleamed in his eyes, and threw twisted shadows across his face.

“We’re the same,” Martin whispered.

Blood seeped up through the tiles, bubbling from the basement below. It soaked into his slippers. It _drip drip dripped_ from his fingers.

“We’re the same,” Martin promised.

A small hand slipped into Malcolm’s own, delicate fingers twining through his, and Malcolm didn’t want to look because there was a body bleeding out in the living room, sinking into the carpet, joining the rest of the ghosts trapped in the house.

But his eyes dragged away from his father of their own will, down to his side.

Five-year-old Ainsley smiled up at him with their father’s smile, her nightgown drenched in scarlet. “We’re all the same.”

Something cold and wet splashed across his face and a scream tore its way up Malcolm’s throat, raw and burning, as he jerked awake. The scream choked off in a breathless gasp as he scrambled back on the hardwood floor, heartbeat stuttering frantically against his ribcage, scattered thoughts trying to piece together what happened. The case, the house, the dead body, the room, and the shape on the balcony, the figure exploding from the armoire-

As if remembering, a sharp pain spasmed in his temple, dulling to an ache that had him hissing through clenched teeth. Gingerly, Malcolm pressed his fingers to the side of his head, wincing as the pain sharpened, the tips of his fingers coated in blood, and glanced around. The ache in his head smeared the room's details into a blur of dim colors, nausea churning in his stomach. Someone had turned the light on and the naked bulb flickered weakly overhead. The doors to the balcony were still closed, the wet curtain blocking the glass, dripping water onto the floor in a steady stream. The armoire doors were closed as well, and it loomed against the wall, innocent under the flickering light.

Malcolm frowned at it before a shape flickering in the corner, a flash of white, a curl of a smile, snatched his attention. Malcolm snapped his attention around to the movement, breath hissing through clenched teeth, and stared at it and felt his chest constrict, tighter and tighter, until he couldn’t breathe.

A sharp intake of breath made him jolt. He twisted around to find Charlie plastered against the wall by the door, holding a glass bottle in what would have been a threatening way if she hadn’t looked so panicked, eyes wide and breath hitching.

“ _What the hell is wrong with you_?” She hissed.

The figure in the corner shifted, but Malcolm kept his attention focused on the throbbing in his temple, on the blood glistening on his fingertips, on the droplets of liquid sliding down his face. He was awake. He was _awake_. “We don’t have enough time for me to answer that,” he groaned, using the back of his hand to wipe the liquid off his face. “What is this?”

“Homemade Holy Water,” she snapped. “And there’s more where that came from, so you better stay right there.” She pointed a threatening finger at him, but her eyes cut to the balcony doors, the curtain lying flat and motionless against the glass, and some of the heat drained out of her voice.

He cringed as pain flared in his temple. “It stings.”

Her eyes snapped back to him and she scowled. “Yeah, I would think so.”

“Bright!”

He glanced up as JT and Dani stormed into the room, guns held high. Dani cut a beeline for him, forehead creased in worry. Dropping to her knees beside him, one cautious hand lifted to hover by his head.

He jerked back before she could touch his temple, ignored the way the room wavered around him, the way nausea somersaulted in his stomach, and offered her a weak smile. “I’m fine,” he said.

Her eyebrows pulled together in a look of disbelief while JT rounded on Charlie.

“What did you do?” He growled.

Charlie held up her hands. “Nothing, I swear! I heard noises coming from in here and saw him passed out on the floor. I was going to see if he was okay but then he started flopping around on the floor and going all exorcist on me.”

Dani shot him a worried look and Malcolm tried to stuff down his own embarrassment. “Just a nightmare,” he whispered. “I’m fine.”

“What are you even doing up here?” Dani asked, twisting around to frown at Charlie. “You should be downstairs.”

Charlie held up the bottle, giving it a little shake. “I needed some liquid courage if I was going to be in the same house as a dead body.”

“That’s alcohol?” Malcolm asked.

She glared at him. “Yeah, but I prayed over it real quick.”

Dani shook her head in annoyance and turned back to Malcolm. “What happened?”

He looked back at the armoire, ignoring the figure that drifted across the room to stand beside it. “Someone came out of there,” he said. “And hit me on the head.”

JT looked at the armoire, frowned, and looked back at JT. "You're joking."

"Nope." Malcolm pushed himself to his feet and the blasted house tilted. He almost crashed into the floor before Dani caught him, grunting as she pulled him back up. Once he was stable again, he pointed at the armoire. "Someone definitely came out of there."

With a disbelieving huff, JT moved towards it, Dani, with Malcolm leaning on her, following and Charlie trailing behind them. JT pulled the doors open. The inside was gutted, an empty space that could have held a person if they squatted. 

"Oh," Charlie exclaimed. "I remember this." 

Reaching past them, she ran her fingers along the backing of the armoire. Malcolm heard a faint click and then it swung open like a door. JT leaned forward to peer into the entrance. Pulling back, he frowned at Malcolm.

"Looks like it's a passage that runs along the hallway," he said. "It's narrow and tight, but someone could definitely fit in there."

"Told you," Malcolm said.

“So,” Charlie said conversationally as they peered into the dark abyss. Already, Malcolm could hear a drunken slur begin to fuzz the edges of her words. “Fun fact about the house’s history. A very rich, very eccentric clairvoyant renovated it years ago. He might have had a flare for the dramatic and, uh, secret passages.”

Dani gaped at her, an equal mix of disbelief and anger on her face. “And you didn’t think to mention that earlier?”

Charlie shrugged a shoulder. “I didn’t think it was important back when you said it was one of us. Everyone was in the same room, why would it matter if there were secret passages?”

“I’m starting to understand why someone would want to kill all of you,” JT grumbled with a shake of his head.

Dani peered back down the passage. “Should one of us go down there?”

JT frowned and shook his head. “No. We don’t know what, or who, might be down there, and that space is too tight for easy maneuvering. If the killer is still down there, they’d have the advantage. It’s better if we regroup with the others.”

Nodding her head, Dani turned back to Charlie. “How many of them are there?” She asked.

Charlie shrugged again. “Not sure. This was the only one we found. This one just goes to one of the other rooms down the hall.”

Malcolm looked at JT imploringly. "A secret passage could be fun," he said.

JT scowled. "No. Absolutely not. And definitely not with you. With your luck, we'd run into a bunch of serial killers nesting like vampires in the walls. 

Charlie’s eyes caught on the balcony door again. "This is where they said he died," she whispered, looking back at Malcolm. "Bainbridge. Threw himself right over that balcony."

Malcolm’s vision swam and her expression dipped and changed, a frown, a grin, a scream. He blinked hard, not realizing he was listing to the side until Dani’s hand wrapped around his forearm, steadying him.

JT stepped to his other side, propping him up some more. “Not even ten feet away from us,” he grumbled. “And you still almost died.”

Malcolm managed a weak grin. “It’s a gift. Find anything?"

Dani's expression darkened, a flare of anger lighting in her eyes. "No. The noise came from a tape player someone had shoved into the corner of the room." She glanced over her shoulder at the armoire and frowned. "It was probably just a trick to get us heading in the wrong direction."

By the time they made it back downstairs, Malcolm could walk better on his own, his nausea more under control, though his head still pounded, a fierce ache that had him cringing back from even the house's dim lighting, and that image still followed him, persistent and stubborn.

Gil stood in front of the others, arms crossed in his highly displeased posture, before he glanced over his shoulder and spotted them coming down the stairs. Emotions flickered across his face, fast enough Malcolm almost couldn't catch them all. Frustration, annoyance, anger, and then his eyes landed on Malcolm and they all collapsed into worry. He made it across the room in three long steps, the lines in his face deepening.

“Bright,” he said, exasperatedly concerned as he tried to peer at the head wound despite Malcolm swatting his hand away. “What happened?”

Malcolm waved his hand dismissively. “It’s nothing, don’t worry.”

“You got hit on the head,” Dani said.

“And I’ve had enough head wounds to know what’s serious and what’s not. Trust me, this is pretty low on the concussion scale.”

Gil frowned. “Your multiple head wounds are why I’m not sure I can trust your judgment.”

“Wait, you were attacked?” Irene asked. The others had followed Gil and were staring at Malcolm in horror, shock, concern, and, in Victor's case, annoyance.

“Then that means there’s someone else in the house, right?” Victor pressed, eyes narrowed. “So the killer isn’t one of us.”

Gil held up a hand. “There’s nothing to worry about, but I need you all to back up now."

Simon scoffed. “Of course. It’s not like one of your men almost died.”

“Your concern is very touching,” Malcolm said, grinning when Simon glowered at him.

"Why should we be worried?" Irene asked again. "If someone attacked him then that means there's someone else in the house. Did you not catch them?" Her hand drifted back up to her throat, her eyes wide. "Are they still here?"

Everyone started talking at once again, their voices loud and grating. A hiss of a whisper curled against his ear, and Malcolm felt a scream build in his chest. Where before the tension in the room had felt exhilarating, it now felt cloying. Too much and too loud. He squeezed his eyes shut, one hand gripping his head, until he felt a hand land on his shoulder.

He peeled his eyes open to find Gil frowning at him. "You need to sit down," the other man said.

Malcolm almost shook his head, and then thought better of it. "I'll be fine," he said. "It's nothing but a flesh wound."

“At least have Edrisa look at it. Just to be sure,” Gil said.

“I’m fine,” Malcolm repeated, putting as much surety into his voice as he could when his head felt like it was splitting apart. “I just need a second. Where’s the nearest bathroom?”

He must have looked worse than he’d realized because Simon’s face softened, just an inch. He pointed towards the dining room. “Down the hallway on your left, it’s the second door on the right.”

Dani trailed him to the bathroom, even though he was pretty sure he was walking in a straight line. It was the house that was moving under his feet. It was the house that was tilting and listing to the side. He was fine. He was one hundred percent fine.

“Are you okay?” Dani asked, leaning against the door frame.

The figure flickered at the edge of his vision, a low laugh bouncing off the tiles, and echoing echoing echoing. Gritting his teeth, Malcolm ignored it and kept his attention pointedly focused on Dani’s face.

“I’m fine,” he said again, more forcefully, as if he could make it true. “Nothing but a few bruises. Just give me a couple of seconds?”

She pursed her lips, but nodded her head and stepped away, closing the door behind her.

Malcolm turned to face the sink, refusing to look into the mirror. His hand trembled as he turned the faucet on and water gurgled and spluttered in the pipes before it burst out in an icy stream that prickled across his fingers, a rush of needle pinpricks. His head pounded, a dizzying ache, and he closed his eyes, hissing a breath through clenched teeth.

When he opened his eyes, he caught sight of the shape flickering into focus in the mirror, the indistinct form of a person standing just over his shoulder. He blinked, harder, despair hollowing out his chest, but the image didn’t disappear.

“Now, Malcolm, lying is no way to make friends,” Martin chided.

Malcolm closed his eyes again, desperately, fingers tightening around the side of the sink until they ached. “You’re not here,” he whispered, more to himself than to the hallucination. “You’re not real.”

“Well, that’s just hurtful.”

Malcolm splashed water onto his face, hoping the shock of cold would force out the nausea twisting his stomach, would wake him from this nightmare trailing him into the waking world. “Why are you here?”

“Sleep deprivation and head trauma don’t play well together, you should know that by now.” Martin’s voice drifted around him, his face flickering in the mirror, sometimes nothing more than the hint of a Cheshire Cat grin. “It’s bound to cause some hallucinations.”

Malcolm braced his hands against the sink. A drop of blood balanced on the edge of his eyebrow before it fell and splattered against the sink, vivid red against stark white. He finally looked at himself in the mirror, at the jagged cut on his temple, the bruise already darkening around the edges. “But why does it have to be you?” He meant it to come out steamed in acid, steeped in righteous anger, but too much desperation weighed the words down, turned them more into a plea.

“Well, dear old Sophie’s off the list. I guess you could be seeing Eve.” Martin bent over to peer at the detailing on the bathtub’s feet with an appreciative hum. “Had a bit of a rude streak, that one.”

Malcolm clenched his jaw tight and glowered at him.

“Would you rather it be one of my twenty-three other victims? I know you looked up all the ones I’d killed after you were born.” Martin clicked his tongue. “I realize you have a hero complex, but honestly, you as a newborn couldn’t have done anything to prevent them from dying.” His expression turned contemplative as he straightened. “Ainsley doesn’t have such a heroic guilt complex. No, my girl hardly feels any guilt.”

Malcolm's glare deepened, hands tightening around the sink. “Stop it,” he snapped.

Martin straightened and shrugged. “You’re also very conflicted, and who better to help you than your own father?”

“You’ve never been a help to anyone but yourself,” Malcolm hissed.

Martin scoffed. “Someone’s in a bad mood.”

With a strangled groan, Malcolm stormed out of the bathroom as much as his pounding head would allow and back into the foyer. Gil made a move to step towards him but Malcolm brushed past him, headed straight for Simon.

“Marcus’s death,” he demanded. “Who did it remind you of?”

Simon blinked, startled. “Excuse me?”

“Marcus was stabbed, that's how he died, but the killer went to lengths to make it look like he fell to his death for a reason, and you know why,” Malcolm snapped.

Simon raised an eyebrow, eyes cutting over Malcolm’s shoulder to the others. “Are we really doing this again? The _real_ killer almost killed you. Shouldn’t we be focusing on getting out of here?”

“But they didn’t kill me. Because _I’m_ not the target. Because _I’m_ not involved in what you all did.” Malcolm flung his hands out. “If anything, this just proves my theory.”

Simon’s attention snapped back to him, lip curling. “You’re crazy.”

The chandelier flickered and the room seemed to dip in and out of focus, everyone and everything slipping out of view, fuzzed and blurred at the edges, except for Martin. He remained crystal clear as he prowled around the room, peering at each person, always in focus, always _there_ , and there was a bitter irony to it all that made a hysterical laugh build in Malcolm’s chest. Even in a house filled with ghosts, he was still haunted by his father.

“Who. Was. He.” Malcolm ground out through clenched teeth.

“He was a scholarship kid way out of his depths,” Victor answered absently, attention narrowed in on a loose thread in his sleeve. “No one important.”

“Apparently, it’s important to the person trying to kill you,” Malcolm snarled. He could feel the others sliding him worried looks, but he ignored them. “Who cared about him? Who was he close to? Anyone who would blame you for whatever happened?”

Silence.

Martin came to a stop beside JT, folding his arms over his chest and drawing his shoulders back in a mocking imitation of the other man’s stance. “It’s a shame, really, how many people seem to slip through the cracks,” Martin said.

Malcolm pointedly ignored him, fingernails digging into the palms of his hand. “His father?” Malcolm pressed.

“His father died a little over a year ago,” Simon answered, voice curt. “Besides, I don’t think he cared much about anyone.”

“Mother?”

“Never met the woman. Never wanted to.”

“His sister,” Abigail said, voice soft.

Malcolm glanced over his shoulder at her. Whatever anger she’d had before had been swallowed. She had settled back down on the first step of the stairs and absentmindedly picked at the skin around her thumb. “He was close to his sister. He used to say she was the only family he had. He told me that night he was going to California.” A crease appeared between her eyes, her lips tugging down at the edges. “Right in the middle of the school year, and he was just going to pack up and leave.”

Malcolm turned to her, ignored the way his father popped up beside her, staring down at Abigail with an exaggerated look of pity. “Have you heard anything from her?”

“I talked to her once, after their father died,” Simon muttered. “None of us ever met her.”

Malcolm glared at him. "I was asking _her_."

“It’s like you said before,” Victor interrupted, exasperated. “No one cared. He had a drunk of a dad and a druggie of a mother and a sister who couldn’t wait to get away from him.”

“I wonder if anyone will care about your death, you sniveling piece of shit,” Natalie snapped.

“Why are you even here?” Victor shot back.

“I’ve been asking myself that same question. Why am I here? Except to learn that my fiance really wasn’t going to change, in a few weeks he would have ended up being the exact same person I met, and apparently, I didn’t even know him then.”

“Everyone needs to calm down,” Gil said.

But Malcolm didn’t feel calm. It felt like the tremor in his hand had spread to his chest, it felt like that wide smile on his father's face was going to crack his head in two. It felt like he was going to vibrate apart, from anger, from grief, from fear. From the need to solve the case that hadn't been solved, to bring justice to a victim that had almost been forgotten. “What happened to Alex?” He asked.

"Do you think solving this will absolve you of all the other things you missed?" Martin asked as he trailed his fingers across the wall. "Do you think this will pardon you of all the years you ignored your sister's suffering?"

“He went missing,” Simon hissed through clenched teeth.

“Are you sure?” Malcolm shot back. He was focusing on the case. Not on his father. He was focusing on the _case_. He looked at each of them in turn. “Are you sure he went missing? That he’s not the one doing all of this?”

There was a brief stutter of hesitation and then, as one, the others turned uncertain looks towards Simon.

“Well?” Malcolm asked. “Are you sure?”

Simon lifted his chin. “Figuring that out is your job, isn’t it? Or do you normally have to seek outside help?”

Malcolm opened his mouth, a retort sharp on his tongue, and then thought of Martin, of Ainsley.

Martin shot him a sympathetic look. “He’s got you there, my boy.”

“What about Abigail?” Victor piped up, stabbing a finger at her while Simon made a growled noise of protest. “She’s always been a creepy little loner, ever since high school. Never seemed to get along with anyone.”

“How many friends did Ainsley have growing up? I know she mentioned a couple, but none of them ever seemed to last.” Martin picked an imaginary piece of lint off Gil’s shoulder. “Or to exist out of school. Also never seemed to have any serious relationships, they always felt more like something she put on a to-do list.” He smiled proudly, giving Gil’s shoulders one final brush with the palms of his hands. “My girl is very good at pretending to be normal.”

Malcolm clenched his hand tight. “That doesn’t make someone a murderer,” he snapped.

“Then what does?” Victor shot back.

“Stabbing someone repeatedly with a knife?” suggested Martin innocently.

“Killing someone,” Dani snapped.

Martin beamed at her. “I knew I liked that one.”

Malcolm clenched his hand tighter and valiantly tried to ignore his father. He was just a hallucination, he didn’t know anything. Malcolm would have noticed sooner. He would have noticed.

“Isn’t that the problem, though, my boy?” Martin’s voice whispered in his ear. “It’s practically your job description. Someone always has to die before you notice anything.”

“You want to know what I think?” Malcolm said, desperation and anger twisting his voice. “I think you killed him. Maybe just one of you, maybe all of you, and tried to cover it up.”

“And where’s your proof?” Simon snapped.

“All of this is our proof. The fact that each of you answered a text message from a stranger. The fact that all of you are tied to this house by one single night. That you are all being blackmailed. Is that all supposed to be a coincidence?"

Simon’s chin lifted, eyes blazing. “That won’t stand up in court.”

Malcolm laughed, the sound brittle, the sound sharp, the sound holding far too much of his father in it. “You shouldn’t be concerned about convincing a jury. You should be concerned about convincing the killer trying to murder you.”

“It’s a good thing, then, that we have NYPDs best to protect us.”

“And how can we protect you if you keep withholding information," Malcolm snarled. "We might as well sit back on our hands and do nothing."

He knew the words were a mistake seconds before they left his mouth. It was like striking a match. Alarm flared up; Irene's panicked voice and Simon's indignation cracking through the air like sparks. Dani and JT slipped forward the assure them that they were still doing everything they could to keep them safe, while Gil pulled Malcolm back by the arm, expression wavering between anger and worry.

"You need to take a step back now," he said.

All the anger, all that prickling energy, drained out of Malcolm in a wave, leaving behind nothing but bone-deep exhaustion. He opened his mouth, to apologize, to tell Gil he was fine, really, when his eyes caught sight of Charlie over Gil's shoulder. She was by herself, leaning against a wall, swiftly gulping down her drink. The room seemed to steady around him again as he stared at her. 

She was drunk, and alcohol had a tendency to loosen tongues. 

Malcolm mumbled an apology to Gil and moved towards Charlie, quick enough to avoid the shocked suspicion on Gil's face.

Charlie leaned against the door frame, bottle clutched in a shaking hand. The knuckles of her hand were stark white, her gaze locked onto the floor, but she looked up when he stopped in front of her, and her lips curled into a loose smile.

“I know what you’re going to ask,” Charlie said before he could speak. “And yes, sadly, Victor has always been this obnoxious.”

Malcolm smiled, tight and thin. "That doesn't surprise me, honestly. I figured he came out of the womb that way."

A smile broke across her face, stretched towards her eyes, and he could just make out the way they would crinkle at the edges, could just get a glimpse of the way she’d normally smile with her whole face before it died, a slow wither into a small frown. But that glimpse had been enough for him to think of that girl in the photo, her face crinkled in glee as a boy planted a kiss on her cheek.

“Why were you up there?” Malcolm asked.

She startled a little bit, face pale, and then lifted the already half-empty bottle with a sardonic twist of her lips. “I know where Marcus kept the good stuff.”

“I thought he quit.”

“People quit all the time. Hardly ever sticks,” she muttered, gulping down another swallow.

Malcolm leaned against the wall beside her, ignored the way the hallucination of his father did the same on his other side, and lifted a hand to ward off her offer to share. “So,” he said, conversationally. “You went upstairs, where an alleged killer might be lurking, just for a bottle of scotch?”

“Marcus didn’t skimp out on alcohol. Trust me, this stuff is worth dying over.” Her lips quirked in a shallow smile, an agony turning her voice raw every time she spoke Marcus’s name. Malcolm thought back to when he’d talked about Marcus’s death, to that look of pain on her expression, spasm like across her face. The full-body ache of a stab wound. The shock of it. Even now, he could see the vestiges of it lingering in her eyes, hiding in every desperate swig of her drink.

She caught him looking at her and shrugged a shoulder, eyes dropping back to the floor. "Never said I was smart," she mumbled.

“Or maybe you were looking for something else?” He pressed. “The proof, possibly?”

She stayed quiet, lips pressing into a thin line.

“What happened?” He asked, softening his voice.

Her gaze dropped to the bottle as she shook it faintly, watching the liquid ripple inside the glass. “Teenage years,” she whispered. “Nothing but stupid mistakes.”

He leaned his head back against the wall as silence settled between them. His head pounded, a steady, relentless ache, but for once Martin was silent. For just a moment, he could close his eyes and pretend his father wasn't always in his head, even when he wasn't actually here.

“Alex drummed his fingers on the desk in algebra class,” Charlie said abruptly, and he dragged his eyes open to look at her. Her fingers drifted through the air, tapping out a silent beat. “Maybe he was nervous. Maybe he was bored, I don’t know. But he would tap out the same beat, over and over and over, and that’s all I can think of now, when I think of him. Just that same beat, and it’s so weird, to think an entire life could be narrowed down to that one simple beat.”

He thought back to the look on her face when he’d described Marcus’s death, after the pain had disappeared. It had been similar to Simon’s reaction, a nauseated recognition.

“I don’t think that’s the only thing you remember,” he said.

She didn’t look at him, though her fingers stopped, mid beat, in the air.

“Charlie, you need to tell me what happened,” he asked again.

Slowly, her hand drifted back down to her side.

“You know, my book is coming out soon. I never managed to write anything that sold, just a couple of duds, but my agent is so sure this one will sell. It’s filled with heart, grit, meaning.” She leaned her head back against the wall with a grimace, one hand pressed against her stomach. “That’s what my life boils down to. _Grit_.”

“I’m assuming whatever proof this person has would ruin any chances of a successful book.”

“You could say that.” She took another deep swallow, the bottle almost empty, and winced. “My mother was a doctor. Always too busy to pay any attention to her nagging daughter. I found out pretty quickly that if I got on her nerves enough, she’d give me her prescription book, just so she could be done with me for a night. I could write up any prescription I wanted. Found out even faster that other people would do anything to get on my good side once they knew.” Her lips quirked, a faint, hollow movement that died halfway through, that slipped back into a frown. “The very thing that my mother used to dismiss me made me the star of the school. They tell you you get over that, you know. That urge to be liked. Hasn’t happened yet, though.”

Malcolm felt like he was standing on the edge of a cliff. So close to either slipping over the edge or seeing the world laid out in front of him. “Did you drug him?”

“It was just a joke, that’s all,” she whispered. “It was all just a stupid joke. We were such assholes.”

“Charlie,” he kept his voice soft, even as he felt his stomach twist. “What happened?”

“His father didn’t seem to care,” she whispered, her gaze dim, a light note of anguish threading through her words. “That’s all that stuck with me. He kept going on like nothing had changed and I couldn’t help but wonder if my mother would have acted any differently.” She winced and lifted a shaking hand to her temple. “My head is killing me,” she moaned.

“Charlie.”

They both glanced up to see Simon standing a few feet away, staring at them, his eyebrows drawn together.

“You should sit down,” Simon continued, though his eyes were fixed on Malcolm. “You don’t look so good.”

Charlie snorted and pointed at him with the bottle. “This is why you don’t have any friends,” she slurred but pushed herself off the wall. She patted Simon's shoulder as she stumbled on by, making her wavering way over to the others.

Simon’s stare snapped to Malcolm. “Is this how you normally conduct your investigations?”

“Questioning witnesses?” Malcolm arched an eyebrow. “Yes, that’s typically how it goes.”

“Questioning them without a lawyer present.”

“I can question them as much as I want until they say they want a lawyer.” Malcolm tilted his head to the side. “And I don’t think any of them want you as their lawyer.”

He smiled, thin-lipped. “Regardless, questioning someone who’s on the verge of being drunk isn’t exactly ethical.”

“Then you can lodge a complaint,” Malcolm answered. “Assuming we make it out of this alive.”

“Is that another threat?”

“Of course not. It’s just a possibility. One that gets higher the more you keep secrets from us.”

“There’s a maniac trying to kill us,” Simon said. “That should be all you need to know.”

“This maniac isn’t trying to kill you for fun,” Malcolm explained. “There’s a reason. I understand the reason, I understand the killer, I’m better able to predict what they’re going to do next. But I need to know more.”

A muscle in Simon’s jaw feathered. His eyes cut away from Malcolm to the windows showing the front yard. “There’s nothing more to know. He went missing fifteen years ago. It was tragic, yes, but that’s all it was.” His eyes were steel when he looked back at Malcolm.

A shatter of glass on the floor jerked their attention back to the room, a sharp, panic tinged exclamation. Malcolm pushed himself off the wall, heart leaping.

Charlie was hunched over in the middle of the room. She clawed at her throat, her breaths short, wheezing gasps, and Malcolm thought, inexplicably, of invisible hands squeezing the air from her lungs.

“Well,” Martin’s voice whispered in his ear, darkly amused. “That doesn’t look promising, does it?”

Malcolm pushed himself off the wall, running towards her as Charlie collapsed onto the wooden floor, her limbs spasming in jerky, stiff movements. Irene had backed up a few steps, hands covering her mouth and Abigail hovered beside Gil, knees cracking. His knees cracked onto the wooden floor as he fell beside her, trying to stop her head from cracking against the hard floor. Her brown eyes sought his, wide and panicked, tears sliding down her cheeks.

“It’s okay,” Malcolm whispered. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Lying isn’t very moral, son,” Martin said.

Edrisa fell to her knees beside him. “She can’t breathe.” She looked at Malcolm, panic and steely determination in her eyes, even as her fingers shook. “Did she eat anything? Drink anything?”

Dani knelt down beside Edrisa, ripping her jacket off to fold it underneath Charlie’s head, and Malcolm looked past her to the broken glass on the floor, to the puddle of alcohol dampening the floorboards. “The alcohol,” he whispered. “She was drinking that alcohol.”

Edrisa twisted around to shout at JT. “See if you can smell anything in it,” she said. “If I can figure out what was in it, maybe I can stop it.”

JT snatched the broken bottle and took a deep whiff of the broken glass, his face contorting in frustration. "I can't smell anything."

His father moved to crouch down beside Dani, right in Malcolm’s line of sight, and he knew, even without that look on the Surgeon’s face, even without seeing that bright-eyed fascination, that they were already too late. Charlie’s eyes were wide, mouth stretched, short, pained gasps choking from her throat as she bucked and kicked on the floor. Tears streamed down her face and her eyes rolled to the back of her head, as her fingers curled into claws.

Her movements grew weaker, the gasping softer, and then nothing, nothing but glassy brown eyes staring at him, all that panic, all that pain, all that fear, gone.

Edrisa glanced up at him, her eyes wide. “She’s dead,” she whispered.


	6. The Blackmailer

They placed Charlie’s body in the kitchen beside Zane’s, and Edrisa scrounged around in the cabinets until she found two small towels to place over their faces. It wasn’t much, but she seemed content with giving them that small piece of privacy.

They slipped back into the foyer where Dani stood, arms crossed over her chest, watching the quiet and somber group of suspects.

A faint buzzing filled Malcolm’s head. It was always surreal, no matter how often he witnessed it. Being so close to a living, breathing person, and then them dying seconds later. It made it harder to pull up that barrier, to focus on the details and not think about the person.

“How did this happen?” Gil asked.

“The killer must have slipped poison into her drink,” Edrisa said. “There are any number of poisons that can cause that kind of muscle spasms.” She chewed on her lower lip, distress written clearly across her face. “Strychnine maybe?”

Malcolm nodded his head. “The Mysterious Affair of Styles.”

She glanced at him, blinking, before she shrugged, a faint smile on her face. “I prefer Death on the Nile.”

He could see JT staring at them in confusion, but at least Edrisa was looking at him now and not at the body. She was looking at him and thinking about Agatha Christie novels instead of all the things she could have done differently to save Charlie’s life.

“So, our killer’s an Agatha Christie fan?” Gil asked, one eyebrow raised.

“Not necessarily.” Edrisa snorted. “But honestly, who wouldn’t be?”

Gil sighed and looked out at the others. “We need to figure out a way to get everyone out,” he said.

“No,” Malcolm said.

Gil’s eyes cut to him and he frowned. “Bright.”

“No, not until we talk to them. Gil, she never let that bottle out of her sight, which means the poison must have been in it before she found it. The killer not only knew Marcus well enough to know where he hid his alcohol, but also knew Charlie would know where to find it.” He met Gil’s grim stare head-on. “We’re not dealing with some stranger. Whoever the killer is, they know these people. And who knows them better than the people in that room?”

“And what about the person who knocked you out?” JT asked.

Malcolm sighed, frustrated. “They have to be working with someone here, a partner to help them so they can be in two places at once."

Gil’s expression turned grim. “Then what do you suggest we do?”

“Divide and conquer,” Malcolm said.

JT frowned at him. “Not sure that would work here, bro.”

“Everyone here is feeding off someone else’s answers,” Malcolm said. “They’re not going to say anything because they know no one else will.”

Dani nodded her head. “And if we separate them, then they might start to doubt.”

Malcolm grinned, a sharp, wolfish movement. “Exactly. If we play our cards right, someone is going to slip up.”

He could see Gil mulling the idea over in his head, weighing the pros and the cons, before he shook his head, looking like he already regretted his decision. “What exactly do we need to be looking for?”

“The killer isn’t passionless,” Malcolm said. “Whatever happened that night is the driving force. Use it.”

Gil’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Fine. But at the next sign of danger, we’re getting out of here.”

“Perfect.” Malcolm grinned. “I call Victor.”

He couldn’t tell if Gil’s concerned look was because he had chosen Victor, or because he’d _eagerly_ chosen Victor. “Be careful,” he warned before turning to the others. “Dani, you take Natalie and Irene. I’ll take Simon and Abigail. JT, you and Edrisa examine the bodies.”

JT frowned. “Great.”

JT and Edrisa disappeared into the kitchen and Malcolm, Dani, and Gil took one step towards the others when Edrisa came scurrying back into the room.

“Um, guys?” She pointed behind her, towards the kitchen, eyes wide behind her glasses. “What happened to the dead bodies?”

Malcolm and Gil shared alarmed looks before all three of them followed Edrisa into the kitchen. Malcolm came to a stop in the doorway and stared at the spot where two dead bodies had once been just a few minutes ago, nothing left behind now but the towels Edrisa had put over their faces. Gil pinched the bridge of his nose, hissing a frustrated breath through clenched teeth. “What is going on?” He groaned.

“Are you sure they were dead?” JT asked.

Edrisa stared at him with such offense that JT looked a little abashed. “You know what, Detective Tarmel,” Edrisa said, sarcasm layered thick in her voice. “They might not have been. I’m sure Zane could have survived a stab to his chest and having his eyes gouged out, not to mention the lack of a pulse, and Charlie was surely an actress so great that she could have faked suffocation to such a realistic degree that even her heart stopped beating.”

“All right, all right,” JT muttered, holding up his hands. “Sorry, I get it.”

Gil dropped his hand to his side with a sigh. “Right then. JT, you and Edrisa search for the bodies. We’ll go ahead with interviewing the others, but, one more strange thing happens, and we’re leaving.”

Malcolm followed Gil and Dani back out into the foyer as JT and Edrisa began to search the kitchen. Out in the foyer, the group of friends had distanced themselves already. Natalie and Irene standing at different sides of the room, Abigail and Simon hovering closer to the stairs. All that paranoia, all the frantic anger from before had simmered down to a low, guttural fear. 

There was a thin, fracturing silence, and then Victor started to laugh. “Oh, whoever it is has a twisted sense of humor.”

“Will you stop?” Irene snapped.

“Zane was the cameraman, and his eyes were gouged out. Charlie was our own personal drug dealer and she gets poisoned.” He laughed again, the faintest taint of hysteria leaking into his voice, and he swung towards Abigail. Panic disguised as anger twisted his voice into a sneer. “Oh-ho, I hate to find out what that means for you, sweetheart.”

Simon moved, but Irene got there first. The slap cracked through the room, a shock of noise that echoed.

Dani moved quickly across the room, pushing the two of them apart before things could get worse, glaring at Victor when he tried to get to Irene.

"That's enough," Gil snapped. "Natalie and Irene, go with Detective Powell. Victor, go with Malcolm, and Simon and Abigial come with me, now."

Simon's mouth snapped open but Gil held up a hand and leveled a glare in his direction. "Do it," he said, carefully enunciating each word. "Now."

Simon closed his mouth, jaw clenched tight, but followed Gil. 

Malcolm turned to Victor with a raised eyebrow. The other man rubbed his cheek, lips stretched in a sarcastic grin. "Well," he said, waving a hand in front of him. "Have I got a story for you."

* * *

They ended up in a room Victor claimed had once been an office, down one of the hallways that connected to the dining room. The walls were made of the same dark wood as the rest of the house, though there were no windows. Malcolm flipped the light switch and the bulb turned on with a steady flare of gold, not a single flicker.

Malcolm dropped his stare to Victor as the other man paced around the room. "What did you mean before, when you said the killer had a twisted sense of humor?" Malcolm asked.

Victor leaned against a wall, arms crossed over his chest, smirking. "They're killing everyone based on what they did that night. Marcus was technically the ringleader, Zane filmed as much as he could, and Charlie provided the drugs, and Irene and Abigail were our resident actresses."

"That doesn't worry you?"

"I wasn't as involved that night as the others."

Malcolm frowned. “You don’t seem as concerned with secrecy as everyone else.”

Victor shrugged a shoulder with a thin grin, the slap mark on his cheek the one spot of color on him, a bright, shocking red. “I do my best to help the boys in blue.” His grin widened at Malcolm’s disbelieving scoff. “Besides, I wasn’t really involved in anything that happened. They stuck me down in the basement, and by the time I came up, it was all already over.”

“I don’t think that matters to the killer.”

Victor shrugged. “Maybe not. It makes sense, though, that Marcus was the first one to die. The whole thing was his idea.”

Malcolm crossed his arms over his chest. “What idea was that?”

Victor drummed his fingers against the wall behind him. Short, staticky bursts of movement. “In case you couldn’t figure it out, the whole family has extreme daddy issues. The great and late Mr. Stine was only impressed with the best, which just so happened to be Simon. Marcus? He was the worst, failed at everything.”

Malcolm raised an eyebrow. “And Abigail?”

Victor snorted. “She was in the middle. Neither good nor bad. So she didn’t exist. But see, Marcus finally started making good grades, on math of all things. He was the best of the best for once and then here comes the nobody, riding in on the tails of some ridiculous scholarship. Oh, Marcus didn’t act like he cared, but you knew he did.”

“So what did he do?”

Victor spread his hands out slow, encompassing the room. “Why, we did what any good friends would do. We took him on an inclusive tour of the most haunted house in the area, with a little help from some of Charlie's more special treats.” His laugh was short, bitter. “Poor bastard almost lost it when we invited him. Didn’t think any had talked to him outside of class before, beside Abby.”

Malcolm remembered all too well how it had felt back before he had learned to be suspicious of every kind gesture, when someone had reached out. That desperate little ache of want, like a fresh bruise, that snuffed out any warnings. His fingers curled into tight fists. “You tried to scare him?”

“That was the plan. Just a little bit of fun. Give the little weirdo a scare, that’s all.”

“If you were there, why weren’t you in the photo?”

Victor’s smile turned bitter. “Someone had to take the picture.”

“Ah,” Malcolm said. “So you weren’t involved in the group photo, and they stuck you in the basement, but Alex was the one who wasn’t part of the group?”

Victor’s expression twisted. “I’m the one who’s still here, aren’t I? Oh, don’t look at me like that. Like I said, by the time I got out of the basement, it was already over. I had nothing to do with it.”

“What was already over?”

The smug expression returned to Victor’s face and Malcolm thought that he seemed to relish the attention. “I come out, and Simon’s there and Alex wasn’t. They told me he ran off into the woods and we never saw him since.”

Malcolm raised an eyebrow, skeptical. “Really.”

“Until you can prove otherwise, yes.” He grinned again. “Though I’m pretty sure you’ve already pieced together your own theory on what happened.”

Malcolm tilted his head to the side, eyes narrowing. He had started to piece together an idea of what had happened, but there was another aspect of the case he wanted to pursue at the moment, another angle he thought he'd solved. “You were surprised when you saw everyone here. No one else was, because they knew why they were coming. But you thought that text was about something else."

One pale eyebrow rose. “Is that so?”

“You also weren’t surprised when you found out Marcus died. You looked relieved.”

“If you had known him, you would have been relieved too.”

Malcolm hummed in the back of his throat. “Is it the money,” he asked. “Or is it the thrill of flaunting it in front of them without them knowing?”

A careful stillness settled over Victor. Gone was the amusement, gone was the mockery. A little glimmer of warning pooled in his eyes, the edge of a threat lining his too-casual tone. “I have no idea what you’re implying.”

Malcolm shrugged and pointed a finger toward Victor’s wrist. “Oh, nothing. Just, that’s a Rolex, which is usually outside the price range of someone between jobs. I would know,” he said. “I have five.”

Victor stared at him, before slowly, he started to smile. It was a seething, misshapen thing. More snarl than a smile. If anger festered, then bitterness curdled, and years of being ignored and dismissed had made Victor nothing but bitter. “It was a gift from some friends.”

“Is it exciting that they haven’t figured it out yet, or does it frustrate you that they don’t pay any attention to you?”

That seething snarl turned stilted, a flash of anger in his eyes. “I don’t need them to notice,” he snapped.

“Marcus figured out you were the blackmailer,” Malcolm pressed. “That’s why you met him here, just a few days before he died. Did you kill him over it?”

Victor stared at him for a moment, in the silence that followed his question, and Malcolm could see him mulling it over, weighing the pros and the cons of an answer.

“He did figure it out, surprisingly, enough,” Victor said, folding his arms over his chest. “Never thought he’d be the one to put two and two together. Granted, he didn’t have any actual proof, so it wouldn’t have mattered even if he hadn’t died. But no, I didn’t kill him. It’s bad business to kill off the people giving you money.”

Malcolm wasn’t expecting the anger that flared in his chest, white-hot and burning. “You turned Alex’s death into a profit.”

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Victor said, waving a hand dismissively. “Dear Alex’s own father was the one who gave me the idea. See, he knew his son hadn’t run away, but he was willing to sing any song for the right price. I’d always thought it was a one time deal until the old drunk died. Marcus told me his father, and then Simon, had been sending him money for years, just enough to keep him comfortable.” Victor scoffed. “And if he could make money off of it, why not me?”

Malcolm’s eyes narrowed into a glare. “Does that help you sleep at night?”

“I don’t need help sleeping at night," Victor sneered. "You and I both know Alex isn’t going to mind; it’s probably the only good thing that came from him anyway.”

“You weren’t afraid someone would rather spill the truth than pay you?”

“And ruin all of their precious lives?” Victor laughed, short and sharp. “Of course not. It didn’t matter that Marcus found out who I was. What was he going to do? Turn me in?”

“Mutually assured destruction,” Malcolm muttered.

“Exactly. The worst he could do was tell the others, but then his fiancee might happen to find out too, and I don’t think he was willing to risk that relationship just yet.”

“He seemed willing to tell her.”

“Everyone always seems willing at first.” Victor smiled, eyes glimmering. “Do you want to know something really messed up? Marcus and Charlie had this thing going ever since high school, one of those obnoxious, will they won’t they scenarios, with everyone always betting on them getting together. And our dear Natalie used to be blonde.” His grin widened. “Kinda messed up that she dyed her hair the exact same shade as Charlie’s, right? So, no, I don’t think that relationship was ever going to last. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if she had killed him herself."

"You might not have killed anyone," Malcolm said. "But blackmail is still a crime."

"True, but you're the only one who knows, and I think you're going to be preoccupied to tell anyone." He reached behind his jacket and pulled out a gun. "Did you really think I would come out here without some kind of weapon?"

Malcolm held up his hands slowly. “All I have to do is shout, and they’ll come running. You’ll end up in jail.”

“Maybe," Victor said. "But you’ll be dead.”

“Ah, mutually assured destruction, huh?”

Victor smiled. "Now you're getting it. Move. Now."

Slowly, they moved out of the room and down the hall, one inching step at a time. The house seemed to shrink around him again, the wall pressing down, the walls leaning in, that silence coiling tight around him. Malcolm's mind spun, conjuring up and dismissing scenarios with each step. None of them ended with him not getting shot. And, honestly, he was getting a little tired of hospitals.

Malcolm edged back, one small, shuffled step at a time. “You’re not a killer.”

“And a year ago I wasn’t a blackmailer. People can always change. Usually for the worse." Victor gestured for Malcolm to stop and told him to turn around. Malcolm found himself face to face with a door, and Victor told him to open it.

Malcolm opened the door, mind running through a list of escape scenarios. Could he yell and then duck fast enough to avoid a bullet? Doubtful. The door opened to a set of stairs leading down into a pit of darkness; the basement. He had just enough time to realize that before Victor slammed a hand between his shoulders. Malcolm fell forward with a choked off shout, twisting, and slammed into the stairs. Pain flared in his shoulder, his head, his legs, and wrists as he tumbled down the stairs, landing into a crumpled heap with a low groan.

He heard the door slamming shut overhead, but Malcolm could do nothing more than curl on the dusty ground, pain sparking across the back of his head, his elbows, his side.

‘You know, you really should invest in a helmet.” Martin’s voice echoed around the darkened room. “All this head trauma is not good for you.”

With a muttered curse, Malcolm dragged his eyes open to pitch-black darkness. He could see a faint line of light higher up from the door at the top of the stairs, before it disappeared. He rolled over and pushed himself to his hands and knees, hissing through his teeth. One arm crumpled under his weight, a sharp flare of pain in his wrist causing him to cry out. He curled one hand around his throbbing wrist, holding it close to his chest.

A low, dragging sound reached his ears, a whispering hiss of movement through the dirt, and Malcolm froze.

“I’m sure it’s just rats,” his father’s voice drifted out of the dark, and Malcolm could just picture him, leaning casually against a wall. “Not a decaying corpse dragging its way towards you across the floor.”

“Shut up,” Malcolm hissed.

“Isn’t this where the electrician died?” Martin continued. “That sounded like a truly painful death. I couldn’t blame any lingering spirit for being a bit bitter after that.”

Something brushed against Malcolm’s leg and he jerked it away, heart hammering in his chest. Another scraping sound echoed in the room, growing closer, and Malcolm scrambled back some more, despite the pain in his wrist.

“It’s all just in my head,” Malcolm hissed, even as he felt another hand brush against the back of his shoulders. “None of this is real.”

“Just because it’s in your head doesn’t make it any less dangerous,” Martin said. “Just think of poor Bainbridge. The sounds of his children crying were all in his head and look at how he ended up.”

Another hand, rough and rubbery, trailed against his cheek and Malcolm jerked back, heart stuttering in his chest. “Not helping,” he snapped.

“Then let me help like I’m supposed to,” Martin said. “Let’s do what we normally do then, let’s talk over the case.”

Malcolm crawled towards the stairs. Or where he hoped the stairs were, feeling out the floor with his good hand, desperately hoping his fingers didn't brush against something other than dirt. A faint whispering noise drifted around him, and Malcolm started to speak, if only to block it out. “Victor certainly had motive, especially if Marcus discovered his secret. There’s no telling who he might have told, and if Simon knew, he’d probably have the resources to bury Victor before he could spill the truth.”

“Yes, yes, always with the motive, but where’s the passion?” Martin said. “Where’s the emotion? Where’s the heat, the anger? The blackmailer angle is always so dull.”

As much as he didn’t want to admit it, Martin had a point. A blackmailer covering their tracks or a brother desperate to keep a family secret wouldn’t be this angry. They would have been motivated by self-preservation, not rage. It didn’t fit the profile.

“But something else has been bothering you, hasn’t it, my boy?” He could almost picture Martin staring at him, head cocked to the side, one eyebrow quirked.

Malcolm’s fingertips brushed against rough wood and he felt a spark of vindication in his chest. “If you’re trying to kill more than one person, you’re best bet would be discretion. So why the motel? Why leave Marcus’s body so out in the open?”

It had been an aspect of the case that had been nagging at him ever since that day in the motel. Everything else about the crime scene circled back to the house, to the night Alex had gone missing, but not the location. There was no connection between the motel and that night that Malcolm could find.

“You know, these vengeance killers rely so much on symbolism it’s actually quite obnoxious,” Martin said. “They take all the spontaneity out of killing. They suck out all the art from it, and turn it into something as pedestrian as . . .driving.”

Malcolm made it up to the third step before he put too much weight on his sprained wrist. He curled forward, pressing his forehead against the step, and bit back a groan, tears pinpricking the corners of his eyes. “Is there a point somewhere?” He hissed.

“My point is that everything has a reason. Everything leads to their main goal.”

“I know that, but I don’t-”

“You’re thinking too big, my boy, that was always your problem. You always miss the small details trying to make things so much more complicated,” Martin chided and Malcolm felt a flare of annoyance in his chest. Even as a hallucination, Martin could be condescending. “Take a step back. Break it apart. Look for the threads. What’s their goal?”

He carefully inched up another step. “Revenge.”

“Specifically?”

“Revenge on the people who wronged them.”

“How did the motel help accomplish that goal?”

“It got people’s attention,” Malcolm murmured. “It scared the Stines. It kept the police away from the house, but . . .” He froze, one hand poised above the next step. “But it also brought the police’s attention to the case.”

“Assuming the killer knew that was likely, why would they do that?”

Malcolm frowned, mind spinning. Why? What would be the point of bringing the police’s attention? Why would that help them reach their goal?

“There’s always a link, son,” Martin’s voice whispered in his ear. “Who is guilty in the killer’s eyes? Who’s the link?”

It hit him then like a wave of ice through his veins. There was a link.

Malcolm’s eyes widened. “Gil.”

A gunshot cracked out from overhead, echoing in the heavy silence that followed, broken only by a heavy thud. The unmistakable sound of a body hitting the ground.

Malcolm froze, halfway up the basement steps, panic and dread knotting in his chest.

“Well then,” Martin’s voice curled with delight. “Sounds like things are finally getting interesting.”


	7. The Graveyard

People had warned Dani, when she first decided to become a police officer, of the many ways the job would try to break her, to wear her down until she was nothing but a thin sliver of herself. It would be the crime scenes, stark, gory images of the horrors people were capable of inflicting on each other. It would be the endless hours facing the depravity of humanity on limited sleep, day and night, arresting criminals just to turn around and arrest another, and another.

But it wasn’t the deaths. It wasn’t the horrors or the nightmares. It was the unknown that crept into her thoughts, that burrowed deep into her bones.

The cases they would never have, the cases they would never know about, were what dug claws into her thoughts. The bodies they would never find found a home in her dreams. The lives that were cut short viciously, untethered and forgotten, with no one left alive to search for them, to care for them, to remember them.

She could do something about the cases they were assigned. She could do something about the gruesome crime scenes. She could do nothing about the deaths that fell under their radar. She could do nothing about the victims no one remembered enough to search for.

Gil had told her she couldn’t think like that. They did what they could for the cases they had. They did what they could for the victims that were found. They put one foot in front of the other and did their best to save the ones they could and honor the ones they couldn’t. And she could only do that if she didn’t allow her thoughts to be clouded by what if’s.

But Dani couldn’t help but wonder about the kid who’d disappeared without a trace, about how it’d taken another act of violence to bring his suspected murder to light. But even now, he was nothing more than a whisper of a person, who he had been boiled down to the bare snatches these people remembered. An entire life, an entire person, now pale as smoke and slipping through her fingers.

She led Natalie and Irene into the room to the left of the front door. She couldn’t tell if it was her imagination or if the house had gotten colder. It was a malicious, smothering chill, burrowing deep even through her layers of clothing, stabbing down to her bones. She fought off a shiver, eyes tracing the room’s details.

The walls were painted a muted blue, all the vivid brightness drained from the color. Rain pattered against the floor to ceiling windows while the wind wailed outside and Dani could hear the ivy rustling against the walls, a thin, slithering scrape of movement.

Dani turned to face the two women. Natalie had slunk to lean against the corner of the room, arms crossed, her head bent down, body tense and strained.

Irene was a bundle of nerves loosely tied into the shape of a human being. She paced back and forth across the length of the small room, wringing her hands. Watching her, Dani knew it was only a matter of time before she unraveled. So she stood and she tracked Irene’s movements and she waited. She had been in enough interrogations to know this was the type of suspect you handled with gentle touches.

Irene snuck her glances, quick, fleeting looks, like the sight of Dani burned. She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, closed it.

Natalie pinched the bridge of her nose. “Irene,” she snapped. “Your pacing is making me nauseous.”

“I keep trying to remember him.” Irene spoke the words like they were an apology, the last one curled up into a hesitant question. “I really do, and it seems odd that I can’t? I’m usually so good with people. I think he liked taking pictures? But maybe he actually liked to draw?”

“Irene,” Dani said, gently, cutting the woman off mid-ramble.

The other woman looked at her like a spooked animal, eyes wide, caught in the bright beam of headlights.

“I need you to tell me what happened,” Dani continued, still in that soft, compassionate tone. “It’s going to come out eventually. It’s better if you tell me now.”

“Have you ever hurt someone, detective?” She spoke suddenly.

Dani’s lips pressed tight. “Yes.”

“Not accidentally, or to save someone else.” Irene peered down at her hands and frowned, as if shocked by the way they trembled. “But purposefully, maliciously, hurt someone? Told yourself that it was all just a joke, that you didn’t know what would happen, how could you possibly know what would happen, but you still did it and it was horrible, and there’s no chance for forgiveness or redemption. No chance to make it right. It’s just that moment, that choice, that just rots and rots and-” She glanced up at Dani, imploringly, begging for absolution. “Do you know what it’s like to live with that?”

“I’m sure it was worse for the person you did this to,” snapped Natalie.

“Hey,” Dani warned.

Irene coiled back, as though struck, one hand to her throat. “Of course,” she stammered. “No, I-of course, I know that-”

Natalie took a step forward, eyes narrowed to slits. “Do you?”

Dani stepped between them, hands held up. “The two of you need to calm down.”

“No, no.” Natalie swung towards her and it wasn’t anger burning in her eyes anymore, but panic, wild and catching. “Don’t you get it? I’m not a part of this. I wasn’t involved in any of this.” Her voice splintered as she jabbed her finger at Irene. “You’re the ones who did it, not me.”

"Natalie-" Dani took a step toward her but the other woman recoiled back, shaking her head. 

"No, I can't-" She gasped. "I can't be here anymore-I just, I _can't_."

She moved, twisting past Dani's grasping hands, and sprinted for the door.

“Natalie!” Dani called out, but the woman kept moving, disappeared out the door and back into the foyer.

Irene grabbed her arm before Dani could follow, jerking her back. “No!” She cried out. “You can’t leave me here by myself, please.”

Dani jerked her arm out of the woman’s grasp, nothing but please repeating in her mind, again and again and then gone. “Go to Gil or JT,” she ordered. “ _Now_.”

Irene's face paled but she bobbed her head in a nod, and Dani ran out of the room. The front door was still open, the wind gusting a sprinkle of rain across the floor, and Dani ran out onto the porch, pulling out both her gun and her flashlight. She caught a glimpse of a figure disappearing to the treeline and shouted Natalie's name. But the wind stole the sound, buried it under its own wailing, and the figure kept running. Biting back a frustrated curse, Dani stepped out from underneath the porch and followed.

The cold inside the house had been heavy, thick, but outside the wind had teeth. It tore at her as she ran across the yard, boots slipping on wet grass, and the cold sank claws into her cheeks, her hands, and it was almost a relief to make it to the woods, almost a relief to get a small buffer between her and the wind.

Almost.

The tree trunks seemed to huddle too close, to press in, thin branches bending low to snag on her hair, on her clothes. They swayed around her, a constant, shuddering movement. She could hear nothing but her own breathing, the distant crack of branches snapping under the onslaught of wind, the patter of rain against the dirt. Every now and then, she caught sight of a darkened shape ahead of her, twisting through the trees, and she thought, vaguely, of a will-o'-the-wisp, a ghostly creature leading her farther and farther into the woods. Except hers wasn't a light, just a moving shadow; she doubted this forest was home to much light. It even seemed to swallow the beam from her flashlight, seemed to surround it with darkness and rain until it was nothing more than a dulled light.

Her foot caught against something hard and she crashed to the ground, biting back a curse. She hated nature. Her father had always loved it, loved promising to take her camping, but now the thought sent a sour twist to her stomach.

She pushed herself to her knees and shone her flashlight back to where she had tripped, expecting a gnarled root, but instead it was a broken bit of stone. Dani bent closer, turning it over to see the edge of a few letters carved into the surface.

It was a tombstone.

“Of course,” she grumbled. “Of course there would be a graveyard.”

But then her flashlight caught the other side and she froze.

Blood. Red and shining, it dripped across the jagged edge, mingling into a pale smear with the rain, a few strands of dark hair trapped against it.

Heart leaping, Dani turned around in the mud, shining her flashlight around her before jerking back with a smothered scream.

Natalie’s body was face down in the dirt, not even a foot away from where Dani had fallen. The backs of her clothes, her gray sweatshirt, her jeans, already darkened and drenched with rain, her auburn hair a dark fan spread around her head. And her face . . . _her face_. . .

Dani twisted and dry heaved to the side, eyes burning.

Whoever had done this to her had bashed her head in with the bit of broken tombstone. The killing was oddly similar to Marcus, and she wondered, with a flare of rage, if the killer had found some poetic justice to that.

Dani drew in a ragged breath, throat burning, before she forced herself to turn back to the body. Her hair stuck to her face, her clothes to her skin, what felt like a permanent chill settling in her bones, but she couldn’t leave her out here. Not alone. Shakily, she pushed herself to her feet and took a step towards Natalie.

The brittle break of a twig was all the warning she got before someone slammed into her side. Dani crashed against the ground, head cracking against something hard and unyielding, the breath knocked out of her as her gun and flashlight flew from her hands. There was nothing but darkness overhead, nothing but the silhouettes of skeletal tree branches tangling together, swaying together, and then she felt someone land on her chest, felt hands wrap around her throat and _squeeze_.

She thrashed, twisted, felt the breath slowly being strangled from her lungs. She clawed a hand out, fingers grasping dirt, grass, twigs, before they brushed something hard. Her fingers wrapped around the rough surface of the tombstone and Dani swung as hard as she could, slammed it against her attacker’s head, and knocked them off her. The hands disappeared from her throat, and Dani drew in ragged gasps of air, scrambling back in the dirt before she pushed herself to her feet.

They always said to never fight angry. Anger clouded, anger led to mistakes. But she was full of rage. Rage over dead bodies piling up, rage over the blood on Malcolm’s head, rage over the _please_ , repeated again and again.

Her flashlight was pointed off to the side, the beam a stark white against a tree trunk, her attacker nothing more than a darkened silhouette in front of her. They were bigger, broader, and from the way her throat still ached, from the way she could still feel the impressions of their fingers like a brand of fire against her skin, they were strong.

But Dani was used to fighting people bigger than her. She was used to watching and waiting for them to overextend themselves. She was used to exploiting every small weakness.

She slid into a fighting stance and the shadow lunged. 

Dani twisted to avoid a punch, ducked to avoid another, doing her best to stay light on her feet in the slippery terrain. She could feel herself slowing, could feel the cold and the ache in her throat leeching out the last bit of her strength with each sudden move she made, but she could also feel her attacker getting more and more frustrated with each missed punch.

Finally, they put everything behind one arching punch towards her face. Dani ducked under the fist, pushed herself back up against fast enough to slam the bottom of her palm into his nose. Her attacker stumbled back with a low grunt and Dani kicked her foot out, her boot connecting squarely with their chest. They fell back onto the ground, the breath wheezing out of them, and Dani moved, pulling her leg back to slam it down on their chest when they rolled out of the way. Her foot slammed her foot down in the spot where they had been, boot squelching in mud. She turned just as her attacker pushed themselves to their feet, just as they swung out with their arm and something hard slammed into her temple.

Dani collapsed onto the ground, head swimming, mouth flooding with the taste of battery acid. She tried to push herself back up, but her arms wouldn’t hold her, and she fell back onto the dirt, grass and mud curling between her fingers.

The smell of overturned dirt filled her nose and she was back in the graveyard watching the casket that held her father being lowered into the ground and it felt like she was the one being buried, each shovelful of dirt a reminder that she was alone alone _alone_

But there was something else. A part of her that kept screaming to get up, get up, get up. A part that had become second nature, as much a part of her as breathing, a part that had been ingrained through years of training, years of life or death situations. 

Get up get up _get up_

With a groan, Dani lifted her head, eyes catching on the flashlight, just a few feet away. Gritting her teeth, she lunged for it, knees skidding across mud and twigs and dead leaves. Fingers wrapping around the metal, she pushed herself to her feet, ignoring the pain in her head, ignoring the pain in her throat, and twisted around.

Nothing. Nothing but tree trunks and blurred streaks of rain. The light trembled in her grip, her breaths ragged, strained gasps. Dani propped herself against a tree trunk, trying to gather her strength, even as it slipped through her fingers. She had to find Natalie. She couldn’t leave her behind.

The crack was distant, hardly loud enough to be heard over the rain, but still loud enough that she froze. Just a muffled echo through the trees, but she knew that sound better than anything. Years on the job had ingrained it into her very being.

A gunshot.

She took off at a wobbling run. Tree branches scraped at her arms, roots threatened to catch her feet, the forest closing in to stop her from leaving. She fell more than once, muttering a steady, low string of curses against nature and haunted houses and why, why did they let Bright of all people decide whether they stayed in the killer house or not.

There was another shot, a single crack through the air, and her stomach tightened. There was something final lurking in the silence between the gunshots, something permanent. People shot more than once, rapid-fire, if they hadn’t hit their target. A single shot held a certain level of confidence.

She broke the tree line, the house rising up in the distance, windows spilling dim, golden light onto the lawn. Dani drew in a ragged breath that burned on the way down, and then the house plunged into darkness.


	8. The Cop

Searching a supposedly haunted house for two missing corpses, JT wondered if cases had always been this weird or if working with Bright had just made him more aware of the weirdness. Sort of like buying a car and suddenly seeing the same model everywhere you went. Maybe he had been blissfully unaware of the strangeness, too content to notice. Or maybe Bright attracted oddities like a magnet.

He was more inclined to believe the latter.

He and Edrisa had searched most of the unoccupied rooms on the first floor and had found nothing more than an unhealthy amount of mold, a thick layer of dust, and a few creepy dolls he’d had no intention of going near. No dead bodies, no killers, and no clues as to where they had disappeared to.

Edrisa had talked. The entire time. JT hadn’t thought it possible for someone to whisper in a way that sounded so much like shouting, but the ME had accomplished that with rambling panic. If the killer was still in the house, they’d been given plenty of warning before JT or Edrisa got close.

They circled back to the kitchen and Edrisa started to study the floor, the countertops, peered into the fridge and the freezer and a couple of the cabinets for good measure. But JT eyed the back door.

He could hear the wind wailing outside, could hear it rattling against the side of the house as if searching for a way to sneak inside, and he frowned. He doubted the killer would have been able to move the bodies upstairs quick enough for no one to notice. As far as he knew, the stairs in the foyer were the only ones, unless there was some other secret passageway. But the back door looked like the quickest way to move corpses without anyone noticing.

He started to move towards it and Edrisa paused in her search of the kitchen, eyes following him. She appeared at his side as he opened the door and through the thick sheet of rain plummeting to the ground, he could make out the vague shape of a shed in the yard. He couldn’t tell if he should blame it on Bright’s penchant for profiling inanimate objects, or the unhealthy amount of slasher films he’d watched when he was younger, but the shed looked malevolent, crouched in the overgrown yard, all dark shadows back-lit by veins of lightning.

The two of them stared at it, even as the wind blew a sprinkle of cold rain inside the kitchen, and it seemed to glower back at them.

“Ah, of course,” Edrisa squeaked. “The murder shed.”

JT grunted, wondering with a heavy resignation if this was going to forever be his new normal. “You stay here,” he said. “I’ll check it out.”

But Edrisa drew herself up, shoulders back and chin lifted. “No, I shan’t let you go alone.”

JT raised his eyebrows, mouthing, _“Shan’t?_ ”

“I know I might joke a lot, but I would be upset if you died a horrible and tragic death,” Edrisa continued. “I mean, that would just ruin the whole group’s dynamic and I feel like we’ve just found our footing as a team.”

JT scowled at her. “Gee, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Heaving a sigh, he shook his head and drew his shoulders back, as if that would protect him from the torrential downpour he was about to run into. “Edrisa, stay, it’ll be safe-”

“Nope.” And with that, the ME charged out into the rain.

JT had a brief moment of bewildered shock before he ran after her with a growled, “Spending too much time with Bright.”

The raindrops were daggers, sharp with a bitter chill, maliciously slipping through every crack in his clothes. The path that led to the shed had been long overgrown, taken over by grass and weeds and dirt, now turned to slick mud in the rain. By the time they made it to the shed, JT felt the type of cold that threatened to never leave his bones, a perpetual numbness that sank deep.

The shed’s door had been left cracked open, the heavy padlock unlocked, and the two of them slipped inside, finding a small solace from the storm outside.

JT took it all in with a small frown. There was nothing inherently creepy about it. Surface level, it was just a shed filled with dusty supplies, what looked like a tarp-covered lawn mower, a flat tire propped against the wall, and some empty jugs scattered about. There were a few cobwebs strung in the corners of the ceiling and someone had carved the word _out_ again and again, with alarming urgency, into a section of the wall, but JT was sure there was a simple explanation for that.

He leaned closer to better inspect the words, carved rough and deep into the wood, when a choked off gasp from Edrisa snatched his attention. Spinning towards her, his flashlight lit her up. She’d pressed herself against the old lawn mower, hands curled close to her chest. “Found a corpse,” she said, breathless.

JT moved closer for a better look. Zane’s body was propped against the wall, hidden behind a shelf and a piece of tarp that had pooled around his stiffened legs. His eyes were two ragged black holes in the dark and JT suppressed a shiver.

“Alright,” he said, scanning the rest of the shed. “But where’s-”

He was already moving before the gunshot had finished echoing, moving on autopilot and years of training, stepping in front of Edrisa as his mind already started calculating _where_ the shot had come from. He turned to the door, sure the shot had come from the house, in time to see someone stumble to a startled halt in the shed’s entrance.

JT had just enough time to register wide, shocked eyes and a dark beard, had just enough time to register that he _knew_ him, when the man slammed the doors shut.

With a sharp curse, JT charged towards the door and slammed his shoulder against it seconds after hearing the _snap_ of the padlock locking. The wood shuddered underneath the force of his hit, but didn’t budge farther than an inch. JT slammed his shoulder into it again, and again, took a step back and kicked his boot against it. The door still didn’t budge.

A second gunshot sounded, the noise definitely coming from inside the house, and JT cursed. “How is this the only thing in this place that’s not falling apart?” He snarled in frustration. He gave the door one more kick before turning to Edrisa, clocking the pale look on her face.

“That was Cartwright,” he said, a little bit of victory leaking into his voice despite the situation. He pointed a finger at her. “Bright was wrong.”

Some of the shock slipped into indignation. She huffed. “Maybe you’re just delusional.”

He gaped at her. “ _I_ _’m_ the delusional one?”

She just shrugged a shoulder, but at least she wasn’t looking quite as panicked anymore. “Besides, Bright guessed the killer was working with someone else. So, technically, you’re only half right.”

With an incredulous shake of his head, JT turned his attention back to the door, folding his own worries away. Focusing on the problem at hand, the steps he needed to take to fix them. “We’re stuck,” he said. “We need to find another way out.”

“Okay, okay,” Edrisa muttered. “Right, don’t panic.”

“I’m not,” JT mumbled, looking around the room for another escape route.

Edrisa kept talking like she hadn’t heard him. “There’s absolutely nothing to be worried about. Bright will save us! He’s so smart, and so handsome. Did you see how nice the suit he’s wearing is? I mean, not as nice as the one he wore a month ago. Now that one really made his eyes pop.” She sighed. “His eyes are gorgeous.”

The full weight of the situation, of being trapped in a small, confined space with Edrisa, no escape possible, washed over JT in a wave colder than the rain outside. Some of the panic he hadn’t been feeling fluttered to life.

“No,” he moaned, tugging at the door again, running his hands along the hinges, desperate for a way out. “No, no, no, no.”

Edrisa kept waxing poetic about Bright’s eyes and JT pressed his forehead against the door in defeat. “Please,” he groaned, to whoever might be listening. “Please, just kill me now.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, exhaling heavily, and then promptly opened them again when Edrisa stopped talking. It was an abrupt silence, one that sliced off the middle of a sentence, and JT glanced over his shoulder, forehead furrowed. Edrisa was staring at the floor, hands still posed in a frozen gesture, her head tilted to the side.

“Edrisa?” JT asked cautiously.

“There’s no mud,” she murmured.

“What?”

She still didn’t look at him. “There’s no mud, except from our own footprints. And there were no drag marks in the grass. I mean, that man looked huge, but I doubt he could have carried two dead bodies without having to drag one of them, and the ground’s wet enough that there should have been marks but there weren’t, and there’s no mud in here.”

JT frowned at her. “So?”

She started moving around the room, knocking over empty jugs, running her hands along the walls, dragging her shoes across the ground as if searching for something small that had been dropped.

“What are you doing?” JT asked, bewildered.

“He had to have gotten them in here somehow,” Edrisa explained. “His exit would have needed to be fast, too, there was no telling how long we would be away from the bodies. He needed to be in and out in a way that wouldn’t leave a trace, which is hard to do when the sky is pouring and there’s mud everywhere.” She glanced up at him, her glasses a flash of light, her smile wide and excited. “Long story short, I think he had another way in.”

Her shoe seemed to snag against something and she let out a crow of victory and bent down, brushing dirty and dust away from the floorboards with her hand.

JT moved to stand beside her as she pulled a hatch open. The two of them peered down into darkness, one with open glee, the other with trepidation.

Edrisa giggled with delight. “This would be so _cool_ if there wasn’t a very high chance of us dying.”

JT stared down into the dark pit, incredulous. “Freakin’ Scooby-Doo nonsense,” he muttered.

It was, quite frankly, the epitome of bad horror movie choices. A darkened tunnel inside of a murder shed, a cramped enclosure leading who knew where that was the perfect place to be picked off by a killer. It was the exact harebrained decision Bright would make, but there had been a second gunshot, and JT’s team was still in that house.

He nodded his head at Edrisa. “Good catch.”

She glanced up at him, grinning. “You want to go first?”

JT raised an eyebrow. “What, scared of the dark?”

“You know, we could always just stay here,” Edrisa said, far too casually. “I meant to ask you, how do you feel about bringing Tally over to my place for a night of charades? That way, I can invite Bright and still pull it off as a casual gathering of colleagues, but if he’s interested in something more-”

“Nope,” JT said firmly, pretending he couldn’t see Edrisa’s grin of victory, and climbed down into the murder tunnel.

* * *

There had been a photo. Just a single picture. It had taken Michael Alexander Malone Sr a half-hearted fifteen minutes to track down, to unbury it from underneath a pile of beer bottles and cigarette butts. He had passed it over to Gil without a second glance before plopping back down in his ancient recliner, hazy gaze locked on the infomercials playing across his TV screen, unconcerned with the disappearance of his son.

Memories were tricky things. Time had a tendency to warp and shift, to brush details away like a hand sifting through sand. No matter how hard Gil tried, he couldn’t conjure up the exact image. His memory kept bending around it, kept fuzzing the edges, kept replacing features with ones from other cases.

Except for the eyes.

There had been a distinct, haunting impression of sorrow in those brown eyes, even as Alex smiled at the camera. A quiet resignation in the way that smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, in the way his shoulders slumped. It was an aged sorrow carved deep in a young face, and had left the taste of ash in Gil’s mouth.

He took Abigail and Simon into the room across the foyer from where Dani had taken Irene and Natalie. He wasn’t sure what it was supposed to be; an office or a parlor or a sitting area or one of the other ridiculous names rich people gave rooms when they had far too many. It was small and cramped, decorated in the same life-sucking tones as the rest of the house, and he could feel it dragging at his mood as he looked at the two siblings. 

He couldn’t remember much about the night he was called to investigate Alex’s disappearance. He remembered an indifferent father accepting his child’s absence with a shrug. He remembered a mother they could never track down. He remembered a frantic sister on the phone, hours spent trying to console her.

He remembered trying to talk to a solemn-faced group of kids and being barred by an even more solemn-faced father. But, he also remembered catching a glimpse of a girl in the next room staring back at him, red-eyed and scared.

As Gil stared at Abigail, he could see traces of that young girl in the way she stared at her hands, twisting her fingers together, in the way her teeth sank into her bottom lip. And he thought, looking at her, that he saw the same quiet resignation in her eyes that he had noticed in the picture of Alex. 

He glanced over at Simon, stationed like a guard beside his sister, and wondered if he would find traces of that same, stoic solemness he had found in Nathaniel Stine that day. He found some in the blank, professionally disdainful way Simon looked at him, but there was something else about him. A difference between the two that Gil couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Gil glanced back at Abigail. Malcolm had said the killer was emotional, angry, and to use that anger against them. But Gil didn't see anger. He saw something else entirely.

“You knew Alex,” Gil said to Abigail. “You knew him better than the others, it seems like.”

“She’s romanticizing a tragedy, nothing more,” Simon said.

“Then she can tell me that herself.” Gil knew guilt when he saw it. He had become familiar with all its many different forms, and he could read it in every line of Abigail’s posture. Sometimes guilt weighed on a person, filling every inch of them with cement, and sometimes it carved a person out, leaving them hollow and drifting.

“I did. We were partners in our art class.” Her shoulder twitched in a small shrug. All of her movements looked lethargic. They died halfway through, as though she lacked the strength or will to follow them through. “I was lonely. He was lonely." Her voice dropped to a soft whisper, almost lost to the wind howling outside. "I thought we were friends.”

“Something changed your mind?”

“He wasn’t happy. He wanted to leave.” Her gaze drifted to a window, the barest flicker of pain in her eyes. “His father was . . .forgetful. He often acted like Alex didn’t exist and I think he was afraid that eventually he wouldn’t.” Her lips twitched, a bitter, self-deprecating movement. "People can only be ignored for so long before it starts tearing at them."

Simon heaved an exasperated sigh. “I fail to see how this is helping you catch the actual killer.”

“It’s helping me figure out who it could be.” Gil held up a hand before Simon could say anything else. “If nothing happened to Alex, then you have nothing to worry about. What about his sister?” He vaguely remembered talking to her on the phone. The hysterical pitch to her voice as he tried to reassure her the best thing she could do was to stay where she was, in case Alex did show up.

He had kept calling every month, even as the days dragged by with no actual updates, before she finally stopped answering. He had understood. One could only take disappointment and heartbreak for so long.

“They were close,” Abigail said softly. “Their parents weren’t great, so for the longest time, they just relied on each other. And then she left, and it was just him.”

“Did it make you upset?” Gil asked. “Him wanting to leave to live with his sister?”

“Of course,” Abigail said, and there was something in her voice that sounded too raw. “Of course it made me upset. He was my friend.”

“Abby, stop talking,” Simon said, quickly. “You don’t have to answer any of his questions.”

She looked at him for a moment before nodding and in that split second, their roles seemed to be reversed. A younger sister taking care of her older brother instead of vice versa.

And then Gil realized the difference between Simon and his father. In that moment, he didn’t see a control freak. He didn’t see a cold-hearted person trying to keep their reputation spotless. He saw a panicked brother doing his best to keep what little remained of his family safe.

“I get it,” Gil said. “You want to protect as many of the people you care about as you can, and this is the only way you can think of to do it.” His voice softened. “But this isn’t the way. If you want me to catch the person responsible for Marcus’s death-”

“Of course I do. He was my brother,” Simon snapped and grief masquerading as anger flared in his eyes. “But I’m not going to let you destroy what little family I have left.”

“Then let me help you. My team and I are the safest chance you have of getting out of here, but we can’t do our jobs if we don’t know who we’re up against or why.”

“Do you think I don’t know how this works, detective? I know your precinct needs a win, desperately. You expect me to believe you’re not willing to make up crimes just to get a high profile arrest?”

Gil opened his mouth to reply when he heard the gunshot, loud and piercing enough to be close by. He twisted towards the door as the other two jerked back with startled gasps, one hand going to his gun. He waited in the silence that followed, tried to pick up other noises in the house, but there was nothing.

Gil pulled his gun out and glanced over his shoulder at Abigail and Simon. “Stay in here,” he ordered. “Close the door behind me and do not open it for anyone else, understood?”

For once, Simon didn’t argue. He nodded his head, mute, and Abigail stood beside him, one hand pressed to her lips.

Gil slipped out into the foyer. The chandelier flickered overhead, a rapid, strobing flutter, as Gil closed the door behind him. Underneath it, Irene was sprawled out on the floor, almost gracefully, as if she had drifted down onto the wood. One arm was stretched toward the front door, the tips of her fingers reaching for freedom, her hair a spill of scarlet stained blonde across the floorboards.

Her head was turned to the side, blue eyes glassy, and he could see the jagged edge of a gash dragged across her throat. Gil pressed the tips of his fingers against her neck, muttered a soft curse at the lack of pulse. Glancing over to the room where she was supposed to have been with Dani, he saw the door wide open, the room beyond shadowed and empty.

He stared back down at Irene. Her slit throat was the only wound he could see; there were no bullet holes, and there was no gun on her. Tension tightened in his chest. Pushing himself to his feet, he headed towards the kitchen.

The dining room was empty, the house still and quiet around him as he moved around the table and he tried not to think about how odd it was that no one in his team had come to investigate the gunshot-and into the kitchen. He tried not to think about how strange it was that Malcolm wasn't running headfirst towards that danger. Tried not to think about how the only thing that would stop Malcolm from running towards that gunshot was if Malcolm was already in the same room as that gunshot. 

Shoving the thoughts away, Gil nudged the kitchen door open and froze. 

The blood registered first. It was scattered across the fridge. Splattered on the counter, on the floor, on the walls. He heard the sound next. A wet, gurgling noise, breaths struggling through lungs that weren’t working.

He moved, steps slow and careful, towards the source of that noise, whispering a soft curse, caution sliding into frantic urgency. Victor lay on the floor, blood pooling heavy and thick around him, coming from stab wounds too multiple for Gil to count. His eyes were open, frantic, searching, his chest heaving with every one of those horrible, struggling gasps for breath as Gil dropped to his knees beside him.

His eyes sought Gil’s, filled with a wild, desperate fear as his breaths grew weaker and weaker, and Gil had enough time to place his hands over one of the many wounds, had just enough time to start saying that Victor would be all right, before Victor's breaths shuddered to a stop, his eyes dimming, that pained expression turning slack.

It was that stillness that always stuck with Gil. The way a living, breathing body just stopped in the space of a blink. So much life, so much movement, turned vacant.

He heard the noise before he felt the pain. That all too familiar crack of split air, and then a slight pressure near his shoulder. The confusion that followed as his brain tried to connect the two.

And then the agony hit.

It was white-hot and all-encompassing. A flare of fire in his shoulder and Gil crumpled forward, strangling a shout of pain behind clenched teeth, one hand propped onto the floor to stop himself from falling completely.

Gritting his teeth, he pushed past the pain in his shoulder and turned, fingers already turned numb and half-useless from pain struggling to grip his gun. He had just enough time to see the person behind him, to get a shout to build in his throat, before something hard slammed into his temple.

Gil collapsed onto the floor, stunned, the ceiling swirling overhead. His thoughts crumbled in his mind until there was nothing but the fire in his shoulder, the shattering pain in his head. He blinked, hard, and a dark shape appeared in his line of sight, crouching down beside him.

Two brown eyes stared down at him and through the foggy haze settling across his mind, he thought of that picture. That single picture. Except there was no sorrow in them this time. There was no sad resignation. Just rage, bottomless and simmering, as hot as the fire burning in his shoulder.

The pain rose in a wave that threatened to drag him under, his vision darkening at the edges, as that face, those brown eyes, moved closer. Through the roar of blood in his ears, he heard a whisper, a threat, a promise.

“You will die alone, and no one will ever find you.”

And then the pain dragged him down, down, down into nothing.


	9. The Forgotten

There was nothing but silence.

Malcolm stood outside the basement door, feeling untethered, the house looming and empty around him. It was dark enough that he could only make out the vague shapes of objects and it was quiet. Too quiet. A silence that rang in his ears. That buzzed along his veins. A silence that felt too much like panic.

He trailed his hand along the wall as he walked, feet shuffling quietly over the wooden floor. During the climb up the stairs, his wrist had throbbed in an all too familiar agony, persistent and stubborn, and his right ankle had joined in halfway, his head banging along the entire time. But it all felt distant now, muffled, as though the pain belonged to someone else.

There was a point where panic tipped into a smothering calm. With each step he took, Malcolm could feel that cotton-like sensation settle over him, the house’s quiet seeping into his pores. There was a careful way he didn’t think about what might be waiting for him around the corner. There was a careful way he didn’t consider what those two gunshots meant. What the silence meant. He could feel himself balancing on a thin line, bracing for the fall.

He moved through the dining room towards the foyer where the others should have been. It was as silent and dark as the rest of the house, that stuttering heartbeat of a chandelier snuffed out, but it wasn’t so dark that he missed the shape crumpled on the floor.

Malcolm stilled, breath coiling in his lungs as he stared at it, lying in the middle of the floor like a discarded toy. It was enough for him to think _body_ but not enough for him to know _who_ and he didn’t want to look, didn’t want to know the answer to that question. But even as fear prickled through his veins, there was the whisper of Natalie’s voice like a cold chill against his skin. _She could only crawl across the floor. She made it halfway across the foyer before he caught up and slit her throat._

He drifted forward a half-step, a traitorous, horrible spark of hope flaring in his chest. The killer relied on symbolism, they killed their victims based on their part in what had happened to Alex, and there was no reason for Gil to have been killed like Bainbridge’s wife. There was no connection. He repeated the words again and again in his mind with each step he took, clinging to them until they twisted into a plea.

The front door opened. Malcolm’s eyes snapped up just in time to be hit by a bright flare of light and he cringed back, flinging a hand over his eyes.

“Bright?”

He squinted through his fingers at the darkened silhouette. “Dani?”

She turned the light away from him, angled towards the floor, and he blinked dancing spots from his eyes until they adjusted. Dani moved quickly towards him, concern tight on her face, but came to a jerking halt when her light fell on the body at his feet.

Malcolm followed her stare, heart pounding with trepidation. He first caught a fan of blonde hair spread against dark wood, the strands soaked in scarlet, and gasped out a breath twisted with relief and self-reproach.

Irene.

Her head was turned to the side, her cheek pressed against the floor, glassy blue eyes staring off into the distance and jaw slack. Her throat was slashed, a gruesome smile of crimson that spilled out onto the floor, and one hand was stretched towards the door, pale fingers curled, an imitation of a death that had happened years ago.

But there were no gunshot wounds on her that he could see. Nothing but that jagged gash across her throat. Death brought about in one harsh motion, and Malcolm blinked away a different death, a different slit throat, a different body bleeding out on the floor.

It was clear she was already dead, but Dani still crouched down and pressed her fingers against Irene’s throat, searching for a pulse. Her lips pressed together, a mix of outrage and guilt tightening her expression as she straightened.

“What happened?” She asked. “I heard a gunshot and then all the lights went out.”

“I don’t know. Victor threw me in the basement and. . .” Malcolm dragged his stare up from Irene and the words dried in his throat. A cut oozed a sluggish stream of blood from Dani’s temple, a trail tracing down to her chin. Her clothes were rumpled and torn, covered in a splattering of mud, twigs and leaves trapped in her curls.

He reached out a hand, unthinking, but stopped halfway when she flinched back.

“Looks like you’re taking on all my bad habits,” he muttered, concerned. “What happened?”

“Natalie’s dead.” Dani’s voice was a thin, rasping scratch. “She got scared and ran outside and I tried to catch her but. . .” She swallowed heavily, eyes closing with a frustrated shake of her head. “The killer bashed her head in, just like with Marcus. I tried to bring her back, but someone attacked me, and then I heard the shots.” She looked at him, grim. “She’s still out there.”

“Did you see-“

“Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dark hair, maybe a beard. That’s all I got.” Her eyebrows drew together. “Did you say Victor-“

A creak in the floorboards behind them sent them spinning around. Dani jerked her light up, one hand gripping her gun, and slipped a step ahead of Malcolm.

It took a moment for Malcolm to realize it was Simon standing under the archway to the dining room, squinting at them through the light. His black hair was disheveled, his tie askew. Blood stained the front of his white dress shirt, dripped from his fingers, all that carefully composed calm shattered under wide-eyed panic.

“Please,” he gasped. “Please, we need help.”

Malcolm was moving before Simon had finished speaking, Dani on his heels. His mind was alive with images of whose blood could be on Simon’s hands. Gil or JT or Edrisa or Gil or JT or Edrisa, again and again and again, panic picking at his seams. He followed the other man into the kitchen, his fear contagious and choking, and Malcolm stumbled to a halt, the scene before him scattering his thoughts.

Abigail was hunched over a body on the floor, her bloodstained hands pressed against thier chest, and she glanced up, face pale under the beam of Dani’s light, eyes wide and voice trembling. “He’s dead,” she stammered. “I tried-I tried to-“

Simon appeared at her side and guided her up and away from the body with gentle hands, moving to the other side of the kitchen, but Malcolm hardly paid them any attention. The body was Victor, not Gil or JT or Edrisa, but still, Malcolm stayed planted to the floor, unable to move even as Dani brushed past him. His lungs seemed to shrink, each breath a struggled, short gasp that sent his head spinning, sent the room tilting.

Victor was sprawled onto the tiles, eyes vacant and dark. His clothes were soaked in red, but Malcolm could see the darker gashes where a knife must have been plunged again and again into his chest. Blood was scattered across the kitchen, dark and shocking against all that white, scarlet droplets splattered on the tile on the countertops on the edge of the couch sinking into the carpet _so much red_. Past the roaring in his ears, he could hear that _scream_ again, hear that _my girl_ again, could feel himself falling back into a past the refused to remain dormant.

“This is different from the others,” Dani spoke the words that were trapped in his throat, her voice muffled under the nails-against-chalk-board-screech of his thoughts. “This is overkill.”

A body bled out on the floor and Malcolm wasn’t here. He was in a different room with a different body staring at a different person.

“This is angry,” Dani continued. She glanced over her shoulder at Malcolm, frowning. “Why would this one be so different?”

His hallucination of Martin flickered into view, crouched over Victor’s body. “You are the expert after all.” Martin’s voice was a darkly amused chuckle, low and teasing, his eyes two black pools staring back at him. “What happens to a person to make them capable of such a vicious act?”

It took too long for his throat to work, and when he did manage to speak, it didn’t sound like him, a sand and gravel rasp. “He bled them dry,” he croaked, dragging his eyes away from the body, away from Martin.

Dani’s forehead creased. “What?”

“Victor was the blackmailer,” Malcolm continued, and Simon scoffed bitterly, dragging a hand down his face. “He used Alex’s death to make a profit.” He forced himself to take a step farther into the room, the air thick around him, memories dragging claws against his thoughts. “It’s like the others. Their deaths are symbolic of what they did.”

“It looks like he was stabbed, though, not shot,” Dani said, frowning back down at Victor.

“He had a gun. He could have shot at his attacker,” Malcolm said.

“If he had a gun then he doesn’t have it on him now.” She looked back up at him. “The killer might have taken it.”

The shock was collapsing under panic now, worry over the past caving under worry over the present. Escalations like that didn’t just plateau. The thin dam holding back the killer’s rage had broken. They would keep escalating, keep mercilessly doling out their own version of justice, searching for that release, for that peace, that would never come, and their anger would just keep growing.

And Gil was in their sights now.

Panic closed an icy fist around his lungs. Malcolm twisted around to face Abigail and Simon. “Where’s Gil?”

“I don’t know,” Simon stammered. “He came out here to see what happened and then he never came back. We heard the second gunshot and then all the lights went out, and we couldn’t just sit in that room waiting to be picked off. But the only thing we saw was. . .” He made a helpless gesture to the foyer, to Victor on the floor, nausea twisting his face.

Malcolm could feel Dani looking at him, studying him, eyebrows drawn together, and some of his alarm started to pool in her eyes. “Bright,” she said, shifting a step closer to him. “What is it?”

Malcolm snapped his trembling hand into a tight fist and sucked in a too-thin breath, the air like shards of glass in his lungs. “Gil’s one of the targets.”

“What?”

“He was part of the investigation and he never found out what happened to Alex. In the killer’s mind, he stopped looking. He let them get away with it, so he’s just as guilty.” He dragged a hand through his hair and tried not to think about how the killer’s MO didn’t include keeping their victims alive for long. “That’s why the killer left Marcus in such an open location. They wanted him to be found by the police. They wanted Gil to start investigating. They wanted him to come here.”

Dani shook her head. “But how could they have known Gil would have been assigned to the case?”

“It’s a high-profile victim, and Gil has the highest rate of closed cases in the precinct. It was a gamble, but one that paid off.” Frustration was starting to leak into his voice, starting to shiver across his hand, rapid and whip-like, scattering his thoughts before they could fully form. He should have made the connections sooner. He should have figured it all out _faster_.

“Any chance we can have this conversation where there isn’t a dead body in the middle of the room?” Simon snapped.

The brittle thread of Malcolm’s patience snapped. He spun around to face Simon, lips peeled back into a snarl. “No, you don’t get to look away from this.” He jabbed a finger at Victor and Simon cringed back. “This is what happens when you keep secrets from us. People have _died_ and you need to tell me why before more end up the same way.”

“Because there’s a highly delusional psychopath on the loose,” Simon hissed and beside him, Abigail squeezed her eyes shut, nervously wiping her bloodied hands across the front of her shirt.

“Right now, you two are the only ones left.” Malcolm crowded into his space and Simon took a small step back before his eyes narrowed to slits. “Which makes me think one of you is the ‘highly delusional psychopath’.”

“That’s ridiculous. You said so yourself, there’s someone else here.” Simon scoffed, but it was thin, and Malcolm refused to back down.

Simon’s composure had faltered under the sight of Victor’s body, Malcolm could see the cracks peeking through his mask, and he knew he had a few precious moments before Simon managed to shore it back up. And while he couldn’t think about Gil, couldn’t think about what might have already happened without feeling like he was drowning, he could do _this_. He could analyze every flicker of emotion, every twitch of his lips, could pick at every single crack until the whole mask shattered.

“See, I don’t think it’s so ridiculous. If you think about it, you’re the odd one out. You weren’t part of the group that brought Alex to the house, you were the only one who didn’t get a text message, and yet, here you are anyway.” Malcolm flung his hands out to encompass the room, the house, and Simon flinched. “Your friends, your _own brother_ , have all died around you, and yet you don’t seem concerned with stopping the killer.”

It was a low blow and Malcolm could see a flicker of pain, of shock, deep as a stab wound, spasm across Simon’s face, and the cracks yawned wider. He opened his mouth to speak, but Malcolm just started to talk louder, voice a sharp crack against the kitchen tiles.

“All night you’ve done nothing but try to make this whole thing go away. People don’t do that unless they have something to hide, and it has to be something big for you to be willing to let your brother’s killer get away with murder.” Malcolm cocked his head to the side, clocking every twitch on Simon’s face. “Either you’re hiding the killer, or you are the killer.”

Simon’s eyes flicked to the left, an almost infinitesimal movement, a _nervous_ movement, and Malcolm followed that glance to Abigail.

“And _you_ seem to care about Alex more than anyone else,” Malcolm said, snapping his attention to her, and she blinked back at him, eyes wide and lips parted in shock. “You said so yourself, you thought everyone deserved what was going to happen to them.” He pointed a finger towards Victor, but she wouldn’t look, turning her head away from them both like she could disappear from the conversation if she couldn’t see them. “What did he do to make you think he deserved this? What did any of them do to make you think they deserved to die?”

Her bottom lip trembled, eyes squeezed shut tight, and his voice softened. She had been angry, yes, but the killer’s anger was tied to love, tied to a feeling of justification, and he could use that. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see Simon step towards him, mouth opened, stopping only when Dani placed a hand on his arm.

“They murdered him and then they buried him so far down that no one found him,” Malcolm continued, voice coaxing. Abigail opened her eyes and looked at him, and there was guilt there. The kind like a void, never-ending, bottomless, the type that swallowed a person whole. “They made him forgettable, and maybe you couldn’t take that anymore. This person you cared about was gone because of them, and you had to do something-“

“I killed him,” Simon blurted out.

Pausing, Malcolm glanced back at the other man and frowned. He hadn’t said the words with the guilt or the remorse, or even the pride, of a confession. No, desperation had edged the words into something sharp, panicked. Even now, he stared down Malcolm with a fierce determination in his eyes.

“You weren’t there,” Dani said, crossing her arms.

Simon lifted his chin, licking the bottom of his lip as his stare flicked back and forth between them. “I lied. I killed Alex. I didn’t mean to, it just . . .happened.”

“No, Victor said you didn’t show up until after it all happened,” Malcolm said slowly, carefully, rearranging puzzle pieces in his head. “You weren’t there when it happened, but you’ve been sticking yourself in the middle of this whole mess, doing your best to keep it quiet. Not just for your reputation. For something else. For _someone_ else.”

Malcolm thought of the tightly wound way Simon had answered their questions all night, the way he had forcefully interjected himself into conversations. He thought of that nervous flick of his eyes, of the panicked way he acted, and the common thread between them.

He glanced back at Abigail. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, or anyone else’s. Just stared at a spot on the wall, at the drops of blood trailing down. She cared about Alex, yes, but she had said _we deserve_ , not _they deserve_. She had been the only one who seemed comfortable being back in the house, who hadn’t seemed panicked by the situation, but thinking back on it now, that calm seemed more like resignation than an assurance of not being murdered.

He thought of flowers placed on the stairs, of the careful way she’d studied them. Maybe they had been left behind by a remorseful killer. Just not the one he’d been thinking of.

“It was an accident, wasn’t it?” He asked, voice soft.

Abigail’s eyes dragged back to him and she broke in a way that reminded him of that first stutter of a sob, that first break between forced peace and stifled agony. An almost full-body crumpling that shuddered through her as she nodded her head, teeth sinking into a trembling lower lip.

“No.” Simon took a half step forward, eyes panicked, and stopped only when Dani held up a warning hand. “No, I confessed. I can even show you where the body is-“

But Abigail placed a hand on his arm, squeezing gently, and his protests died. “No,” she whispered, not taking her eyes off Malcolm. “No more.”

“What happened?” Malcolm asked.

Abigail shook her head, a tear sliding down her cheek. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. None of us did.”

“You went along with Marcus’s plan,” Malcolm prodded. “To bring Alex here and scare him.”

Abigail drew in a shuddering breath. “It was petty, but it was supposed to be harmless. Marcus said we’d bring Alex here, then hide and pretend to be ghosts and Zane would film it, kind of like an initiation into our group. I didn’t know Charlie was going to drug him, I swear. I should have told him no.”

“But you didn’t,” Malcolm said. “Because you were mad at Alex?”

“We were friends. Nothing more. I think he was the first actual friend I had in a long time.” She dropped her eyes to her hands, trembling until she clasped them together tight, fingers turning bone white. “It seems so stupid now, but I was so angry when I found out he was leaving, I just wanted to get back at him a little. And at first, everything seemed fine. He was a little freaked out, mainly annoyed that we had ditched him, but . . .but I think Charlie put too much into his drink. He started freaking out more, getting really scared, and Irene said that we should call the whole thing off. We split up to track him down and I saw him standing outside on the balcony and I just . . .” She closed her eyes, lips twisting, and she talked faster, words tumbling over each other. “I don’t know what happened, I just got so _angry_. I wanted to scare him. I wanted to make him feel the same way I did, but then he grabbed me and he started talking gibberish and I panicked and pushed him and he stumbled back and just fell-“ She gasped, ragged and hollow, her eyes snapping open. She lifted a shaking hand to her temple as Simon wrapped an arm around her shoulder, her eyes haunted. “And I keep seeing his face, every time I close my eyes.”

“And then you hid the body?” Malcolm asked.

“Marcus called me in a panic,” Simon explained, voice tight. “I got a driver to take me here and. . .” he dragged a hand through his hair. “He was drugged. Her DNA was probably under his fingernails. I’d learned enough listening to my father discuss work to know it didn’t look good. So, I called my father and I told him I was the one who’d killed Alex. I didn’t trust him to do anything if he thought Marcus or Abby had done it. But me? I was his prodigy. I was the one he was putting the entire future of his company on.” He scoffed with a bitter shake of his head. “So, he hid the body in the house, canceled all construction, and bribed Alex’s father into saying his son ran away.”

It hit Malcolm then. The seemingly sporadic boards ripped up from the floor, the holes in the wall, Marcus swearing he was going to make things right.

“Marcus was looking for the body.” Malcolm stared at Simon, at the guilt written out in the way he lifted his chin. “But you moved him. That’s why you two had an argument.”

“I did what I had to do,” Simon snapped and his arm dropped from around Abigail’s shoulder, his eyes narrowed into a biting glare. “He was going to throw _everything_ away on some whim, just like he always did.” He spun away from them, dragging a frustrated hand through his hair. “He gets in one accident and tells everything to some woman he’s barely been dating for a year, so yes, I took precautions.”

But how far did ‘precautions’ go? If Simon had covered up a murder to protect his sister once- Malcolm’s thoughts screeched to a halt. “Wait.” He held up a hand. “Marcus told Natalie?”

Simon scoffed, a scraping, bitter noise. “She was the first person that idiot blabbed to. Something about how it wasn’t right to keep such a secret from someone he loved. He was always incapable of thinking about the effects his actions had on other people.”

His words echoed in Malcolm’s head and the puzzle he’d been arranging shifted, the pieces clicking into a new picture. All those brief instances of anger, all that raw grief, suddenly painted under a different light. “How long did Marcus and Natalie date?”

“A little over a year,” Simon said, frowning at him.

Malcolm sorted through previous conversations, realization a wave of ice through his veins. Alex’s father had died about a year ago, and back at the station, Natalie had mentioned her father dying a little over a year ago, right after he had called and told her every wrong thing he’d ever done. Her father, who would have known Alex hadn't run away. “Did you ever run a background check on her?”

“If I ran a background check on every person Marcus dated, I wouldn’t have had any time left in my day,” Simon said, suspicion glinting in his eyes. “What does this have to do with anything?”

Malcolm ignored him and looked at Dani, eyes widening. “I think Natalie’s Alex’s sister.”

Simon reeled back like he had been punched, shaking his head in disbelief, but Malcolm could see from the way her eyes widened, from the nauseous look on her face, that Abigail believed him.

“But she’s dead.” Dani frowned. “I saw her.”

“Are you sure it was her?” Malcolm asked. His eyes caught on the spot of the floor where Charlie and Zane’s bodies used to be and he gestured to it with a hand. “Why did they take the bodies? What was the point of that? She used to be _blonde_.”

Dani snapped up a hand, annoyance twisting her lips. “Bright, you’re not making any sense.”

But his mind was going too fast for him to make sense, jumping from connection to connection, and why hadn’t he noticed before? She’d been nothing but simmering rage all night. She had come to them at the police station, she had been the one to get them to the house. “She dyed her hair the exact same shade as Charlie’s. Victor thought it was because Marcus still loved Charlie, but what if-“

Dani’s eyes widened. “What if it was actually Charlie’s body I saw?”

A simple switch of clothes was all it would have taken. Destroy any facial features, and they wouldn’t have known it was someone else unless they had a chance to closely examine the body. Malcolm remembered the story she’d told him, of Marcus’s take on the Bainbridge origin story. “She needed an escape plan,” he muttered. “It fits the profile. If she’s Alex’s sister, then she would be out for revenge.”

“Maybe, but we still need to find Gil,” Dani said. “And JT and Edrisa.”

Malcolm dragged a hand through his hair. “Okay, think, she’s killed people based on what they did to Alex. Charlie was poisoned, Irene was killed like Bainbridge’s wife. Victor bled to death, and Zane lost his eyes. What did Gil do?”

“Gil stopped looking for him,” Dani said. “So, what, she’s going to make sure no one can look for him either?”

“She could try to hide-“ The words _his body_ got lodged in Malcolm’s throat. He shook his head, thoughts racing. “Her whole escape plan hinges on hiding Charlie’s body after you saw it. We can’t find Charlie either, or we’ll know Natalie didn’t actually die.”

“So, if we find Charlie before they move her, then they might lead us back to Gil.” Dani chewed her bottom lip. He knew she had made the same connections as him, that she knew the same likelihood of finding Gil alive. She drew in a short, steadying breath. “They might already be gone.”

“No,” Malcolm said, as if he could force it to be true. “No, she wouldn’t leave. Not yet. She’s not done until-“ he turned and froze.

Abigail was gone.

His chest constricted and Malcolm twisted around, eyes sweeping the room. "Where did Abigail go?" 

Simon’s head snapped to his side, where she was standing moments before, and panic crawled across his face. He jerked towards the kitchen door, stopped only when Dani grabbed his arm.

“You think she made a break for it?” Dani asked.

“No,” Malcolm muttered. He thought back to that hollow look that had been in her eyes, both in the back of the ambulance and after she’d talked about Alex’s death, and felt his stomach knot with dread. He knew what it was like to be so consumed by guilt that all you wanted to do was make it stop. All you wanted to do was make amends for a past wrong. “No, I think she went to find Natalie.”

He mentally berated himself, fingernails digging into the palms of his hands. He should have seen it coming. He should have stopped her.

Martin flickered into view beside a pale and stricken Simon, head cocked to the side, lips curled into a smile. “My, my,” Martin tsked. “You really are off your game tonight, aren’t you?”

Ignoring him, Malcolm kept his attention on Dani. “You need to find Gil. I’ll go find Natalie and Abigail.”

“I’ll go with you,” Simon started, but Malcolm held up a hand.

“No, you need to stay here. I don't think she means to kill you." She hadn't sent him a text, and she had seemed genuinely surprised when Simon had shown up. He hadn't been involved in Alex's murder, but he had hidden her brother away from her for years, and Malcolm was positive she had intended to return the favor. "But if she sees you, there’s no telling what she’ll do. I’m not someone she’s trying to kill. She might listen to me.”

“Bright, wait.” Dani’s voice was panic threaded into a warning and he stilled, glancing at her. He’d seen that look of concern on her face enough times he’d memorized every line, every furrow. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to split up?”

“No,” he answered and gestured to Victor’s body. “But that was pure rage, and it’s not a good sign. That kind of anger . . .” He cut himself off, not wanting to think about it. Not wanting to finish the thought.

His father’s voice wasn’t as merciful. It was a whispered hiss in his ear. “That kind of anger doesn’t stay buried for long, does it?”

“She’s not going to wait,” he forced himself to continue. “There won’t be time to find them one at a time. I can talk her down, trust me.”

A second passed before she nodded. She opened her mouth, hesitated, and he could see the words in her eyes. The warning of caution they both knew he would ignore. The promise that everything would be fine they both wouldn’t believe. In the end, she closed her mouth and nodded again, turning to head out the back door, back to the forest and the bodies that waited between the trees.

Malcolm turned to head towards the foyer, mind racing, when Simon’s voice stopped him. He glanced over his shoulder at the other man, standing helplessly in the middle of the kitchen, wearing the expression of someone who knew events were spiraling too quickly out of their tightly grasped control.

“Please,” was all he said, spoken in a strained whisper, but Malcolm knew what he meant. He knew the words that lurked unspoken, because he’d whispered them in his own head himself all the times he’d wanted to keep Ainsley safe. He nodded his head in reply and then slipped out of the kitchen, headed towards the stairs.

He knew where they would be. That room, that fluttering curtain, that balcony. The same spot where he had died.

Symbolic. It was always symbolic.

The storm had died sometime in the last few minutes. There was no more rumbling thunder, no more rain pounding relentlessly against the side of the house, but it still felt alive somehow. Poised and dark. Waiting.

Though he could still hear Martin’s voice in his head, Malcolm couldn’t exactly see Martin as he climbed the stairs. It was more the idea of an image than the actual image; the sense of a person walking beside him, the impression of hands clasped behind their back, and the flicker of a Cheshire-cat smile. “You know, people give rage such a bad rap, but really, it’s every emotion in its purest form.”

The house was quiet around him as he drifted down the hallways, not the silence of dead things, but the heavy silence of being watched, and Martin’s words echoed echoed echoed in his head. There had been a rage in Natalie’s eyes when she’d looked at Victor, when she’d snarled at him later that night. A rage on her face when she’d talked about her father. Every interaction had been tinged with that anger, a snarl under every word.

“What is rage, when you truly think about it?” Martin continued. “Rage is grief. Rage is fear. Rage is regret.”

The hallway stretched out in front of him, longer than he remembered. There was no more lightning, no more shifting shadows at the edges of his vision, just hazy strips of silvered moonlight slipping in through the windows. But still, he could feel something lurking in the darkness. Something watching.

Malcolm walked down that hall and thought of the grief on Natalie’s face when they’d talked to her in the interview room, raw and endless. It had been real, he’d just attributed it to the wrong person. To the wrong death.

“Rage is love.”

The door at the end was open, just like before, and he could make out the hazy shapes of three people standing inside, could see that same languid movement as the curtain shifted in the wind. He thought of Eve’s steel-eyed determination to find her sister, the anger in her eyes when she’d faced down the man she believed responsible for Sophie’s death. Remembered the fury in Sophie’s eyes, drenched in grief, and that look of determination that had slipped over Ainsley’s face seconds before she slit Endicott’s throat.

His father’s voice became nothing but a whisper in his head, soft enough that he couldn’t untangle it from his own thoughts, smooth as smoke.

“She’s killing for her family. Is that really so wrong?”

Malcolm stopped inside the doorway. Natalie stood with her back to him, what had to be Victor’s gun held in her hand, pointed at Abigail. Abigail was standing out on the balcony, facing Natalie with her hands up, limed in moonlight with the wind tearing at her hair, and Malcolm thought of that woman spotted in the window of his house, a specter through glass. She caught sight of Malcolm over Natalie’s shoulder, her eyes widening, and he was sure it was only a trick of the moonlight against the glass door that he saw another face beside her, a pale smear gone in a blink.

Natalie spoke before Malcolm could open his mouth.

“He always wanted to travel.” Natalie’s voice was soft, conversational, but Malcolm could still pick out the thread of rage underneath. “Take pictures. See the world. That’s what I used to tell myself he was doing. He was traveling. He was happy. Instead, he was stuck here.”

Malcolm took another step into the room, keeping his movements slow and careful. His eyes cut to Abigail and she met his stare over Natalie’s shoulder. She didn’t look scared. There was that same blank resignation on her face he had seen before, and Malcolm’s stomach tightened.

“It must have been hard,” he said, glancing back at Natalie. “Learning the truth.”

She laughed, a brittle, cracking sound. Her fingers shifted around the handle of the gun, index finger twitching against the trigger, and Malcolm tensed. “Oh, no, that wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was all those years not knowing. Can you imagine what it was like, feeling that same hope rise every time there was an unexpected knock on the door? Every time an unknown number called my phone? Do you know what it was like having that hope torn out again and again?”

“No, I don’t.”

Natalie kept her attention focused mostly on Abigail, but Malcolm could see the flicker of agony spasm across her face, could hear it in the twist of her voice. “You wanna know what the real kicker is? I never invited him to come live with me. He must have been lying. It never even occurred to me,” she whispered. “I thought he would be fine. Our mother was the bad one, and she was finally gone. You give our father one drink and he’d forget about you before noon, and he had a fancy scholarship, a whole world of opportunities. I just kept telling myself he would be fine.”

And there it was, the root of all that rage, festering like a rotted tooth. It was an ache he recognized. One he had felt dig into his chest more than once. That realization that he hadn’t been able to protect a loved one. That they had been suffering for so long and he had been too busy to notice.

Malcolm held up his hands, fingers splayed, and his voice turned earnest. “I know what it’s like, wanting so badly for someone you love to be okay, that you ignore all the signs that they’re not. But what happened wasn't your fault, and this? This isn’t going to fix anything, and I think you know that.” His eyes cut to Abigail, standing frozen out on the balcony. “It won’t fix anything,” he repeated, voice weighted and firm, and Abigail glanced away, stare dropping to the ground.

“And forgiveness will?” Natalie’s eyes cut to him, hard and cold., voice curled into a snarl “Will that bring him back? Will that make things better?”

Malcolm shook his head. “No.”

“Then I don’t see why they can’t suffer like he did.” Natalie raised the gun higher.

“I know where he is,” Malcolm blurted out. “Simon moved him. When he found out Marcus was renovating the house, he came back and moved him so Marcus couldn’t find him.”

Natalie paused, the gun trembling in her grip, jaw clenching.

Malcolm swallowed, willed her to look at him, not at Abigail. “He told me where he is.”

Her attention snapped to him, eyes narrowed in a scathing glare. “You honestly expect me to believe he told you anything?”

“As a deal, yes. To protect his sister.” He shifted forward a half-step, gesturing to the window, to outside. “I can show you. But you have to leave her alive.”

Natalie glanced back at Abigail and Malcolm could see her fighting with herself, but he knew what she would pick as surely as he knew what he would have chosen in the same situation. She was a killer, yes, but she was an older sister first.

With a growl of frustration, Natalie pulled a pair of handcuffs, _Gil’s_ handcuffs, out of her jacket pocket, using the gun to gesture towards the armoire. “Handcuff yourself to it,” she told Abigail.

Abigail slipped back inside, keeping a cautious eye on Natalie as she took the cuffs and moved towards the armoire. She had to sit down, snap one handcuff around her wrist and the other around one of the armoire’s legs and Malcolm frowned. Even empty, he wasn’t sure she’d be able to lift it, or move it.

Natalie turned to face him, gun aimed at his chest, and Malcolm backed out into the hallway, his mind spinning. He hadn’t thought past getting her away from Abigail, hadn’t thought of where to take her. He couldn’t lead her back to the kitchen, not if Simon was still there. He was sure she hadn't planned on killing Simon, but there was no telling what either of them would do if they saw each other. He couldn’t take her around inside the house either, not if he didn’t have a clear idea of where they were headed. The smallest hesitation could lead to a bullet in the back of his head.

“Your father,” he said as they moved down the hallway, just to keep her focused on something other than him. “He told you what happened before he died.”

“He didn’t know everything. He just knew they had told him to lie.”

"And then you decided you had to find out the truth." He glanced over his shoulder at her, shrugged at her raised eyebrow. "It's what I would have done."

She grunted, unamused, as they made their way down the stairs and Malcolm's eyes caught on the front door. He could take her outside, hope that Dani found Gil fast enough to find him, hoped that they would be out in the open for JT or Edrisa to spot, wherever they might be.

“Did you always have this planned?”

She didn’t look once as they stepped around Irene’s body. “Not at first. I was just going to talk to Marcus. You know, people used to say we looked like twins. But that night, Marcus didn’t even recognize me. None of them did, and neither did your boss. Even tonight, none of them believed anyone cared enough to avenge him."

"Gil cares about his cases," Malcolm said."He gave this case everything he had."

"Is that why he missed what was right in front of his face?" Natalie's voice dipped lower, a warning tone twining through her words, and the back of Malcolm's scalp prickled like he could feel her finger twitching on the trigger, and he made a mental note to shy away from any further mentions of Gil.

He left the front door open behind him like a breadcrumb, heading down the porch steps. Outside, the storm had ended, but the cold was still biting, the wind still fierce, tearing at his hair, his jacket. The night was wide and empty around them, somehow too much space and too little space. Grass crunched underneath his shoes as he walked, and he hoped Dani would see him. He hoped she would find the others. He hoped Gil was still alive.

He hoped, hoped, hoped. 

His eyes cut to the forest, but the trees were crowded too close together, a tangled nest of shadows. Then his eyes snagged on the lake. The water seemed to swallow the moonlight streaming through the thin gaps in the clouds, the surface a rippling sheet of black, but it was out in the open. A clear view from both the house and the forest.

Malcolm started to make his way towards it, moving as slowly as he dared. He glanced around as they walked towards the lake, searching for someone, anyone. But there was no Dani. There was no Gil, or JT, or Edrisa. There was no Martin. Just the two of them, and the cold, and the wind.

The wooden pier creaked under his feet as Malcolm came to a stop. Carefully, he turned around to face Natalie, mind racing to find some other way to stall, but Natalie's attention was focused in on the lake. Behind her, the house writhed, wind shivering through ivy, a crawling movement that made it seem alive.

“The lake . . .” She moved past him and stood on the edge of the pier, facing the rippling water. Her shoulders dropped, just a little. “You don’t know where he is.”

He could hear Gil’s voice in his head, telling him to shove her into the water and run, but Malcolm kept still, hands held out at his sides. “You keep doing this, and it will be all anyone thinks about when they remember him. They won’t think about who he was, who he could have been, just this. All that will be left of him is death.”

She turned to look at him, face lined with a leaden sorrow. Her eyes cut over his shoulder, narrowing, and then drifted up. An emotion flashed across her face, too quick for him to name, but he thought of that balcony, of the figure he’d seen through the curtain. Hallucination, a trick of the light, or ghost, it had seemed to him to be too small to have been a grown man.

Her eyes dropped back to him, cold and empty, as she lifted the gun. “That’s all there is.”

He heard a shout behind him, alarm pressed into the shape of his name before the gunshot drowned it out. The space around him grabbed the noise and echoed it until it was all he could hear, ringing in his ears, drowning out his own scream.

Natalie fell. There was nothing graceful about that jerk as she tumbled over the edge of the pier, swallowed by that dark water.

And Malcolm followed her in.

There was a blast of icy cold that shivered across his skin, a violent chill that dug deep, trying to reach the air trapped in his lungs, and then nothing but numbness. Nothing but darkness.

For a moment, he was weightless. He had been trained, back when he had first joined the FBI, to hold his breath underwater, and Malcolm had always thought there was something inherently lonely about the idea of drowning. Surrounded by nothing but an empty space. Cut off from all sound except for the pounding of your own heart, the roar of blood in your own ears.

The water soaked into his jacket, pulled him down farther into that seemingly endless void of black. He couldn’t see beyond the murky water stinging his eyes, but he stretched his hand out anyway. Nothing but a blind reach through the dark. His fingers snagged on clothes, wrapped around an arm.

Darkness swarmed around him. No up, no down, no left, no right, just water, sinking into his lungs, his clothes, dragging them both down.

A hand grabbed the back of his shirt and Malcolm felt himself being jerked upwards. 

Air hit his skin in a prickle of icy needles. Malcolm gasped in a choking breath that stabbed his lungs like knives as someone dragged him onto the pier. His numb fingers stayed wrapped around Natalie's shoulder until he hit the wooden planks, until other hands, warmer hands, pried his fingers loose. Malcolm collapsed, wooden planks rough underneath his fingers as he scrambled farther onto solid ground, coughing violently.

Malcolm dragged his eyes open, blinking away water as that numbness shifted into a biting cold. JT was crouched a few feet away from him, Natalie laid out in front of him, and he was already handcuffing her wrists. Her eyes were closed, her shoulder bloodied, but her chest moved with hitched breaths. She was alive.

JT muttered a tangled stream of complaints underneath his voice as he snapped the cuffs around her wrist. Malcolm couldn't tell if they were directed at him or at Natalie or at both, but at that moment he didn't really care. The relief in his chest was so strong he almost felt like laughing.

JT glanced over at him, brow furrowed, and Malcolm wondered if he had actually laughed. JT's face was set in an exaggerated scowl that didn't hide his concern, but then his attention caught on something behind Malcolm, his eyes widening. "I leave you all alone for ten minutes," he grumbled. 

Malcolm twisted to follow his stare and almost collapsed back onto the wooden planks again. Dani was making her way towards them across the lawn, Gil propped up against her shoulder, Dani's jacket wrapped tight around his right shoulder. Gil looked groggy, a bruise already blooming on his temple, a wound bleeding sluggishly from his shoulder. But he was alive.

Carefully, she helped Gil sit beside Malcolm, her eyes catching his. "You okay?" She asked.

"Never better," Malcolm spoke around chattering teeth. "Abigail is handcuffed upstairs, in the room where Bainbridge is."

"Edrisa's already on it," JT grumbled. "Simon wouldn't let us both leave without finding her, and someone had to stop your crazy ass from getting shot."

“Thanks," Malcolm said. "What about her partner?"

Dani raised an eyebrow. “He won’t be going anywhere anytime soon,” she said, moving to help JT.

Malcolm’s eyes cut to Gil as the other man clasped a hand on his shoulder. "Are you really okay?" Gil asked, voice slurring, and Malcolm could feel that laugh building in his chest again, equal parts hysteria and relief.

“You know, this is the second time you’ve almost died,” he rasped, teasing. “We really need to address this reckless streak of yours before it gets too out of hand.”

Gil’s concern dipped into a scowl. “Don’t make me push you back into the water,” he warned.

Malcolm chuckled, a dry, desperate sound, as he looked back at the house. Edrisa appeared on the porch, Simon and Abigail behind her, and Malcolm's eyes drifted up, back to that balcony. The wind had stilled, and with it, so had the house, but he could still make out a flicker of movement in an upstairs window. But Gil's hand tightened around his shoulder, alive alive alive they were all _alive_ , and Malcolm tore his attention away from it, away from thoughts of the dead, and back to the living.


	10. The Living

They found him at the bottom of the lake.

After questioning Simon, officers had spent most of the following morning searching the bottom of the lake until they found it. A small sack, weighed down with rocks, scooped up from the bottom, nothing left inside but bones. They were small in a way that ached, a physical pain that took up space between Malcolm's ribs.

Edrisa brushed his arm as she made her way towards the bones and Malcolm found some comfort in knowing they would be under her care, at least for a while.

Malcolm glanced back at the house, fighting off a shiver, swarming with police officers and forensic tech gathering evidence. The morning was bright, the sun vivid if not warm, the sky a spread of clear blue over his head, and the house was just another house, left forgotten and rotting at the end of a long drive.

It took him a moment to realize he was searching for movement through the windows, searching for a pale face smeared through the glass. But the house was still, the windows showing nothing but bright flares of sunlight.

There was nothing there, but it was easier, searching a house for ghosts than facing the body of a child, left forgotten for fifteen years, and Malcolm thought Natalie had been right. Sometimes, even without ghosts, there was enough horror, enough pain, in death alone.

* * *

Malcolm used to dream of working in a hospital. He had once begged his father to allow him to spend a day at work with him, to shadow him around those long, gleaming white halls. And when Martin had gently turned him down with a fond chuckle, Malcolm had spent the rest of the day fantasizing about his future as a surgeon. Rushing about in a white coat and an air of importance as he saved people’s lives.

Now hospitals just felt like death.

His shoes squeaked on the hallway floor, the smell of antiseptic thick on the back of his tongue. He nodded his head at the solemn-faced police officer standing by the door before slipping inside the room. Hazy sunlight slanted in through the cracks in the shades, streams of blurred gold lancing across the floor.

She didn’t look over as the door closed behind him. Her left wrist was handcuffed to the bedrail, her shoulder wrapped heavily in bandages, her eyes locked on a corner of the room.

“They found him.”

His words came apart in the space between them, melding into the slight beep of hospital machinery. She still didn’t look at him, still kept her stare focused on that one spot, the only movement the slight shifting of her chest.

Malcolm stepped farther into the room, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “He’ll be buried in the cemetery. He’ll have flowers at his grave, every month.” It hadn’t taken much to convince his mother to have Alex buried beside their great, great uncles. She had even offered to buy an extravagant tombstone, but Malcolm had hesitated. It hadn't seemed right for a stranger to be in charge of picking out a person's tombstone, of choosing what words were carved into the stone.

That seemed more like a job for a family member. Someone who knew him.

“Does it matter?” Natalie's voice was soft and sounded like the pain of pulling a child’s body from the bottom of a lake.

Malcolm shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe. Maybe not. But he won’t be forgotten.”

Her handcuffs rattled against the bedrail, the harsh scrape of metal against metal, as she shifted on the mattress, turned her stare up to the ceiling. “You don’t even know him.”

Malcolm settled into the chair beside the bed, one leg crossed over his knee, hands clasped together. “No, but I could.”

It took fifteen minutes of silence before she finally started speaking. Malcolm leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and listened.

* * *

Thomas Cartwright had gone to Marcus Stine’s house to kill the man with his bare hands and instead met someone who was willing to help him do that and more.

Natalie had told him killing Marcus would have solved nothing. People like the Stines had gotten away with murder long before his wife’s death, and they would get away with murder long after they had Thomas thrown in jail for harassment.

It hadn’t taken much to convince him to help her.

His job, essentially, had been to pull suspicion away from Natalie, to give the cops someone else to focus on while Natalie slowly but surely killed each and every person responsible for her brother's death. He had been the figure Dani had seen disappearing into the forest, luring Dani away while Natalie had circled around back and entered the house again just in time to slit Irene's throat. He was supposed to have knocked Dani out completely, taken Charlie’s body, and have left Dani behind to wake up in the forest alone, but sure she had seen Natalie’s corpse. He was then supposed to have disposed of the corpses, including Gil, where no one would ever find them.

But Dani had fought back more than Cartwright had anticipated. He had panicked, and ran, only to find JT and Edrisa peering at the other corpse he was supposed to have gotten rid of.

Things had spiraled out of control from that moment on.

He hadn’t fared any better when Dani had caught up with him in the forest, searching for Charlie and Gil. She had followed him to his truck, idling down the drive, where Gil, concussed with a bullet hole in his shoulder, was already in the process of breaking free from the back of Cartwright’s truck. His second fight with Dani had been shorter, and he was lucky enough to have survived it with just a bruised temple and a sprained wrist.

When Dani had asked him, afterward, while he was in the interrogation room, why he had agreed to Natalie's plan, why he had been so ready to throw his life away on such a risky plan, Thomas had replied that wife was dead. His life had been thrown away the moment she stopped breathing. 

* * *

The tunnel had brought JT and Edrisa out into the basement, and Malcolm figured that must how Victor had crept into the house without anyone seeing him. They had climbed the stairs with far more grace than Malcolm had managed, and ran into a frantic Simon, who told them he saw Malcolm being led outside by gunpoint and that his sister was still somewhere upstairs and he was going to find her whether they came with him or not.

Edrisa described the entire sequence of events with enthusiastic detail and the flare of a gifted storyteller, with a few short additions added from JT, while Gil was trapped in his hospital bed. Malcolm thoroughly enjoyed the tale, though, from the pained look on Gil’s face, he hadn’t appreciated it as much.

Though that might have been the gunshot wound in his shoulder.

His mood did brighten when JT had solemnly presented Malcolm with a garishly orange ascot.

Malcolm still wasn’t sure why Natalie hadn’t killed Gil right away, not when her profile included killing her victims quickly. Maybe she had wanted him to suffer for longer. Maybe she had heard Simon and Abigail making their way towards the kitchen. Maybe Cartwright telling her about JT and Edrisa being locked in the shed had spooked her. Even though Gil had a good laugh at Malcolm's expense as he tucked the ascot into the collar of his shirt, Malcolm had never been happier to have been wrong about a profile.

* * *

Three years after the Surgeon’s arrest, Malcolm woke to a person standing over his bed.

He’d woken in the middle of the night, fighting awake from a nightmare that had been more feeling than an image: the heavy sludge of terror, the creeping certainty of _something_ getting closer, the coil of unease. It had taken a moment for his brain to untangle the sight of someone standing by his bedside from the shadows draped heavily across the room. It had been a stranger, skin pale, clothes rumpled, eyes so very sad, there and gone by the time Malcolm jerked upright, heart pounding and a stifled scream dying in his throat.

He wasn’t able to put a name to the face until two days later, when a sleepless night sent him wandering downstairs for a cup of water. Jessica had passed out on the couch, the TV’’s flickering light dancing across her face, a half-empty glass of brandy cupped loosely in one hand. And there, on the screen, had been the face of the person he’d seen. The news station had taken a picture from a high school yearbook, the teen’s eyes more joyful than sad, lips spread in a wide smile. Malcolm had stared up at the screen, at his stranger, his ghost, the thirteenth identified victim of the Surgeon.

As Malcolm stared up at his childhood home, he couldn’t help but think of that night. He still didn’t believe in ghosts. He still thought they were just memories, though that didn’t make them any less terrifying, or any less haunting. Ghosts were just memories that were worn smooth and faded by time, a life boiled down to a beat on a desk, an expression on a face. Ghosts were just memories that gaped like an open wound, that were missing in a way that felt too _there_.

And his home was filled with those memories, the brickwork bursting with the ones that were as painful as a knife sliding between his ribs, with the ones that were as choking as a lungful of ice-cold water.

But his mother had been right, all those years ago. Martin wasn’t the only one who had lived there. His wasn’t the only mark left on the house.

Malcolm climbed the stairs and yes, that was the spot where his father had been led away in handcuffs, but it was also the spot where his mother had stood, weeks after their world had fallen apart around them, and faced the swarm of journalists camped outside with a raised chin and scathingly disdainful eyes.

That corner of the foyer was where John Watkins had stood, but that was also the spot where an eight-year-old Ainsley had stood, clutching a hairbrush as a makeshift microphone, Malcolm dubbed her unwilling cameraman, as she wove her fantasies into news stories.

That spot in the living room doorway was where Ainsley had convinced a too-solemn faced Adolpho to play hide and seek with them, and that coffee table was what his mother had stood on and threatened to send them both to a private school in Siberia while Ainsley and Malcolm, both laughing hard enough they could hardly see, crawled across the floor on their hands and knees, searching for Malcolm’s escaped pet snake.

The house was filled with memories that threatened to drag him down into the dark. But they were also filled with memories that could hold him aloft.

Malcolm came to a stop in front of the stairs and hesitated. He knew, with a steady certainty, that he wouldn’t find Ainsley in her old bedroom. Because sometimes, the memories you didn’t remember were the ones that haunted the most, the ones with blank spaces like gaping wounds, festering and aching, that kept calling until you finally caved.

He made his way down to the basement.

Even after everything that had happened with the girl in the box, Martin’s hobby room wasn’t the place that bothered Malcolm the most. It was the office across the hallway. It was that unsettling juxtaposition of his father’s two lives, separated by a few short steps. It was always easier, he found, to face his father’s hobby room than his old office. Always easier, cleaner, to focus on what his father truly was, to stare at that stark reminder. Harder to look at the office and remember all those nights he had spent in there, rapturously listening as his father explained his work.

Harder to remember all the good moments. All the lies.

He found Ainsley standing in front of their father's hobby room, staring into that dark space with an all too familiar blank expression on her face, and Malcolm felt a twist in his stomach, sharp and painful. She looked alone, unmoored, peering into memories he could only guess at.

His shoes scuffed against the floor as he stopped, a soft sound, but still enough to snag her attention. Her head snapped towards him, eyes widening a hair, and then he watched her walls rise, watched a stone-cold defensiveness settle in her eyes.

He had thought about apologizing. He had thought about offering advice. He had thought about giving her a list of therapists, or yoga routines, or a list of birds she could adopt.

But he looked at her and all he could think about was how lonely it must have been, being the one who had to be unscathed.

The loneliness had always been the worst for him. The nights when he’d stayed awake, thinking the only person he had anything in common with was a monster locked away behind bars. Loneliness was its own disease, its own foothold, its own ghost.

So many things could creep in when one thought they were alone.

“I don’t know how much time I’m missing,” he said, instead. “Could be a week. Could be days. Could be a year. But it’s strange, how something I can’t remember can feel like it’s eating me alive.”

His words settled between them, nothing but a blind reach through the dark.

Ainsley lifted her chin. “I’m fine,” she said.

He almost smiled and shrugged a shoulder. “Me too.”

There was a small, barely-there twitch of her lips, before she shook her head. She turned her attention back to the room, that almost smile slipping into a scowl.

“I don’t regret it, and I don't care how that makes me sound,” she said, voice too firm. “I looked into him and his company, remember? Do you really think we were the only ones who found out how corrupt he was? Do you know what happened to everyone who tried to take him down the ‘right way’? I did what I had to do to protect us.”

There had always been a confidence about Ainsley that Malcolm had admired, a strength that had felt as steady as a rock. The way she had kept the Whitly last name and stared down anyone who had tried to give her any grief over it, the same way their mother had stared down those journalists. The way she had always been able to make things true just by speaking them.

But this time, it sounded more like she was trying to convince herself, uncertainty pulling at the edge of her voice. Clinging to her own words like they were the edge of a cliff.

And he knew exactly what that felt like.

It was that feeling of doing something that straddled the edge, tipped a person over the line, just a little. Cut off a man’s hand with an ax, convince a group of robbers to shoot each other, knock a man off the side of a building. Convince oneself that one did it for the greater good, all the while another voice tried to twist those actions into something purely malicious. A voice that sounded a little too much like Martin Whitly. 

His father’s voice had played in his mind all night, trying to twist her into someone like him. A murderer. A liar. But Malcolm knew her. She wasn’t cold-hearted. She wasn’t a killer. She was Ainsley. She was brave, and fierce, and protective.

And nothing like their father.

“Doesn’t mean it isn’t terrifying," Malcolm said.

Some of that defiance cracked, some of the walls she had been building around her crumpled, just a little. Ainsley’s shoulder sagged and she dragged a shaking hand down her face, eyes cutting back to the room.

“I keep remembering snatches of moments, just fragments, and I don’t-“ She frowned, rubbing at her temples as she blew out a frustrated breath between her teeth. “It just feels like I’m. . . “ She made a vague gesture with her hands, fumbling for words.

“Falling apart at the seams?" Malcolm raised an eyebrow. "I have no idea what that's like."

She rolled her eyes. “How do you deal with it all?”

“Well, I’ve heard booze helps. And a few sketchy pills saved over from the eighties.” She chuckled and he smiled. “But I’ve found talking helps the most. Especially to therapists.”

She raised an eyebrow, skeptical. “Don’t you see a children’s therapist?”

He shrugged his shoulder with a grin. “Hey, free lollipops and you can take as many as you want.”

She shook her head with a scoff. “It’s amazing you still have teeth.”

"I have a pretty good dental plan," he said. "And a really good therapist. I'm also a pretty good listener, though probably not quite as qualified."

He couldn’t go back in time and protect her from whatever memories were haunting her. He couldn’t promise that she would be fine. That either of them would be fine. But he could make sure she knew she wasn’t alone. He could make sure he was there for her, just like she had always been there for him. 

Her expression softened as she looked at him, muttering a quiet, "Thanks."

He could hear their mother’s voice overhead, drifting down the stairs, and he looked at her with a grimace.

“I think there’s a play we have to attend.”

She smiled, a flicker of movement, a shadow of the real thing, but there, nonetheless. “We could always sneak out through the murder tunnels,” she whispered.

He glanced longingly in that direction before heaving a sigh. “Pretty sure she would send hounds after us.”

That earned him an actual, genuine smile.

He took her hand as they headed upstairs, trading potential escape plans that grew more and more outrageous with each step they took. Later, they would face the ghosts their father had left behind, face the gaps in their own memories. But for now, they could focus on the present. For now, they could hold on to each other and laugh. For now, they could find some comfort in the knowledge that they weren’t alone.


End file.
